The spacecraft and its three crew were sent into space in October last year to work on China's "Tiangong" permanently inhabited space station. Shenzhou crewed spaceflights have been a regular fixture of the country's space program for the past two decades and have increased in frequency in recent years after China officially completed "Tiangong" in November 2022.

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert, in northwest China on 24 April, 2025 (Pedro Pardo / AFP)

Shenzhou crewed spaceflights have been a regular fixture of the country's space program for the past two decades and have increased in frequency in recent years.