The Manned Space Flight Agency confirmed that the “taikonauts” spent seven hours performing extra-vehicular activities (EVA), and returned without incident at dawn this Friday to the central module of the station.

The three crew members of the mission departed on November 29th and will remain for six months aboard the space station to put the final touches to its assembly.

This is China’s tenth manned mission, and just like the previous one, it will last six months, but with the novelty that this time the astronauts coincided with their colleagues, who were on the Tiangong, before they returned to Earth in December.

China plans to launch several manned missions to train in the assembling and construction of complex and large spacecraft in orbit, carrying out long-duration flights near Earth and large-scale experiments.

Tiangong will operate in low Earth orbit at an altitude of between 340 and 450 kilometers, and was designed to have a service life of 10 years. However, experts believe that it will be able to last more than 15 years with proper maintenance and repairs.

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