Shenzhou 22 set to launch uncrewed to Chinese Tiangong space station

The Shenzhou 22 mission, originally scheduled to fly next year, is now scheduled to launch on Tuesday, Nov. 25, at 04:11 UTC from Site 901 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s Inner Mongolia province. Shenzhou 22, mounted atop a Chang Zheng-2F rocket, will launch without crew and dock autonomously with the Tiangong space station.

Shenzhou 22 will launch in a southeasterly direction to insert the 8,100 kg spacecraft into an orbit inclined 41.47 degrees to the equator, which matches Tiangong’s orbital inclination. The spacecraft, loaded with food and other supplies in place of crew, will also maneuver to match Tiangong’s 386 by 391 km orbit before docking to one of Tiangong’s two ports for Shenzhou spacecraft.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) is launching Shenzhou 22 to provide Tiangong’s current crew with a safe spacecraft to ride home following on-orbit damage to the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft. This damage presumably was discovered in the days or weeks immediately before the Shenzhou 20 astronauts, Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang Jie, were supposed to return home.

Shenzhou 21 crew (left to right): Zhang Hongzhang, Commander Zhang Lu and Wu Fei. (Credit: Xinhua)

The current crew members aboard Tiangong — Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang — launched to Tiangong aboard Shenzhou 21 on Oct. 31. They only have the compromised Shenzhou 20 spacecraft available to them if an emergency were to force an evacuation of the station after Shenzhou 20’s crew returned to Earth aboard the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft on Nov. 14 at a landing site in Inner Mongolia.

The Shenzhou 20 crew and spacecraft were supposed to return to China on Nov. 5, but CMSA elected to delay the return due to damage to a window on the spacecraft’s descent module, likely caused by a space debris impact. Damage was visible on the outer pane; the inner panes were not rated to withstand direct exposure to the plasma and heating of reentry.

Tiangong, in its current state, typically supports a crew of three, but the station had to support six crew members for an additional nine days. The Shenzhou 20 crew needed to return home due to Tiangong’s supply situation, so using Shenzhou 21 to return them was the most obvious near-term solution. The Shenzhou 20 crew spent a Chinese record 204 days in space before landing back in China aboard the Shenzhou 21 descent module.

The Shenzhou 20 crew prepare to disembark after returning to Earth in the Shenzhou 21 spacecraft on November 14, 2025. (Credit CMSA)

Although Shenzhou-22 was originally scheduled to fly sometime in the spring of 2026, the rapid schedule change was made possible due to the Shenzhou spacecraft and the Chang Zheng-2F carrier rocket for Shenzhou 22 being prepared for a “launch on need” mission.

This preparation is in line with the CMSA’s longstanding policy to prepare the spacecraft and rocket for the next Shenzhou mission, as well as the Shenzhou mission scheduled to fly at that time. The Shenzhou 22 mission will be the first launch-on-need flight in Chinese human spaceflight history.

The “launch-on-need” practice has, in fact, been used since the first space stations flew in the 1970s. Thruster leaks on Skylab 3’s Apollo service module caused NASA to prepare the Skylab 4 mission’s Saturn 1B rocket and Apollo spacecraft for an emergency flight to dock with Skylab’s reserve port in the summer of 1973.

Shenzhou-21 launches from Jiuquan on Oct 31. (Credit: CCTV)

The modified Apollo command module would carry five astronauts back to Earth. Further analysis showed that the Skylab 3 Apollo spacecraft was still operational and could safely return the crew to Earth, so the Skylab 4 rocket and spacecraft were released to conduct their planned mission in November 1973.

In the 2000s, NASA had a launch-on-need policy for all Shuttle missions flown after the STS-107 disaster in February 2003. After a given Shuttle mission launched to ISS, if inspections carried out by the Shuttle’s robotic arm found potentially fatal heat shield damage, the Shuttle’s crew would stay aboard the Station until the next Shuttle mission — with a subset of its original crew — was ready to launch.

The launch-on-need policy also extended to the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, with Shuttle Endeavour standing by on Launch Complex 39B for the STS-400 rescue mission, one that was never needed. STS-135, the final flight of the Shuttle program, had a plan for multiple Soyuz spacecraft to rescue the STS-135 crew if needed.

Suspected coolant is seen leaking from the instrument and propulsion module aboard Soyuz MS-22. (Credit: NASA)

More recently, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft suffered a coolant leak in December 2022 — perhaps caused by space debris — while docked to ISS. Russia sent the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft uncrewed on Feb. 24, 2023, to give the Soyuz MS-22 crew a usable ride home, as the lack of cooling on MS-22 could have endangered the astronauts during the trip back to Earth. MS-22 returned safely to Earth without crew, and the MS-22 crew returned to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-23 on Sept. 27, 2023.

The Chinese program no doubt looked at these historical examples of how other space agencies handled compromised crew spacecraft in formulating its policies and current response to the Shenzhou 20 situation. As for Shenzhou 20 itself, the spacecraft remains docked to Tiangong for now, but will need to undock at some point to allow another Shenzhou to dock at the station.

When Shenzhou 20 is undocked from the station, CMSA could attempt to return it uncrewed to the Gobi Desert in China, or dispose of the spacecraft somewhere over the Pacific if engineers believe it is too damaged to survive reentry.

Shenzhou 21 from the Chinese space station Tiangong. (Credit: CMSA)

After Shenzhou 22 docks with Tiangong, the next scheduled Shenzhou launch will likely be Shenzhou 23 in the spring of 2026. China is also planning for one of its astronauts to spend about a year in space and to send a Pakistani astronaut to Tiangong for a short stay. CMSA is also preparing for an uncrewed orbital flight of Shenzhou’s replacement — the Mengzhou spacecraft — next year.

(Lead image: Shenzhou 21 rolls out for launch. Credit: Xinhua News)

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