Rescuers inspect the damaged Shenzhou-20 capsule upon its return to Earth. Credit: X- Embassy of China in Switzerland @ChinaEmbinCH
It was supposed to be a straight ride home — the kind of thing that benevolent astronauts dream of floating for months in a metal laboratory the size of a small apartment. Instead, the three Taikonauts aboard China’s Tiangong space station suddenly became stuck in orbit when a piece of high-velocity space junk hit their return capsule, breaking one of its windows.
Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie had already packed up their belongings, said farewell, and prepared to hand over control to the newly arrived crew of Shenzhou-21. They were scheduled to return to Earth on November 5th. Then a few hours before departure everything changed.
A cracked window changed everything
Officials in Beijing said the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft was hit by a small piece of space junk, but it was of an unpredictable and almost undetectable type until it hit at nearly 29,000 kilometers per hour.
The impact cracked one of the capsule’s windows, which was enough to halt the entire mission. If a window breaks in space, it’s not just a cosmetic problem. It’s life threatening. The reentry capsule must remain completely sealed. Otherwise, the cabin air will escape into the vacuum.
The Chinese Space Agency acknowledged the incident on November 4, announcing on Weibo that its team was conducting “impact analysis and risk assessment” and that the return of the crew had been officially postponed. The message was clear: the ancient aviators were not going to return home in that spaceship.
forced to hitchhike home
With their ship in danger, the three astronauts have only one option: to leave Earth’s orbit aboard Shenzhou 21. Shenzhou 21 was a capsule that had just picked up a new crew a few days earlier.
It’s a swap that no space agency would like because it would leave the station temporarily without an emergency escape vehicle in operation. But China had no choice. The Tyco astronauts returned safely, and state media later hailed it as the first successful use of an “alternative return procedure” in the history of the country’s space station program.
The trio also broke the record for the longest stay in orbit by a Chinese crew, but it’s hard to imagine they celebrated while deciding who would sit where on their unexpected return.
Space station with no exit – dangers increase above Earth
This situation is a reminder that space debris is not a distant theoretical threat. It’s already causing major problems for real missions. Everything from paint shards to parts of abandoned rockets is now flying around the Earth at extraordinary speeds, turning even the tiniest fragments into potential bullets.
China is not immune to this problem. The 2007 anti-satellite missile test produced the largest single cloud of space debris ever recorded, and more than 3,000 pieces of space debris remain in orbit today.
Lincoln Hines, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says it’s too early to know whether the incident will prompt the Chinese government to take stronger action. But he believes it could be a wake-up call.
“Incidents like this highlight how crowded and dangerous low-Earth orbit has become,” he noted. “And no country can solve it alone.”
