Yearender: China's 2025 space endeavors have seen new milestones

BEIJING -- From orchestrating a groundbreaking in-orbit emergency rescue to launching its first asteroid mission and making a wealth of breakthroughs in frontier science, China's 2025 space endeavors have mapped out new dimensions for cosmic exploration.

AMAZING BREAKTHROUGHS

China's space station operations have had a sustained human presence this year, beginning with the launch of the Shenzhou XX crewed spacecraft on April 24, which brought astronauts Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie to the orbiting station for a planned six-month mission. The Shenzhou XIX crew then concluded their mission and returned to Earth with the results of fruitful experiments.

Prior to Shenzhou XX's scheduled return on Nov 5, the spacecraft was found to have developed tiny cracks in the viewport window of its return capsule, which were most likely caused by external impact from space debris. This rendered it unsuitable for a safe crew return.

In a demonstration of operational flexibility and safety-first design, China executed two critical, novel procedures. First, the Shenzhou XX crew safely returned to Earth on Nov 14 aboard the Shenzhou XXI spacecraft, which had been launched on Oct 31 with a new trio of astronauts -- Zhang Lu, Wu Fei, and Zhang Hongzhang. This marked the first successful implementation of an alternative return procedure in the history of the country's space station program.

Second, to ensure the new Shenzhou XXI crew had a dedicated return vehicle, China undertook an emergency launch. On Nov 25, the uncrewed Shenzhou XXII?spacecraft blasted off from Earth, carrying crucial supplies, including devices to repair Shenzhou XX's window, and securing the continuous safety of astronauts on the station. This first-ever emergency crew-backup launch underscored the program's growing maturity and contingency response capabilities.

This year has also seen progress in international space cooperation, with China and Pakistan signing an agreement in February on selecting and training Pakistani astronauts for future space station missions, highlighting China's commitment to partnering with developing nations in the field of crewed spaceflight.

China's deep space endeavors have advanced significantly in 2025. On May 29, the Tianwen 2 probe was launched successfully, embarking on the country's first asteroid exploration and sample-return mission.

With a designed cycle of approximately 10 years, the mission aims to explore and sample the 2016HO3 asteroid and return the samples to Earth, followed by an exploration of the 311P main-belt comet.

It focuses on measuring the physical parameters of its two celestial targets, including their orbital dynamics, rotation, size, shape and thermal properties.

The mission will also investigate the topography, composition and internal structure of the two celestial bodies, and will potentially study the materials ejected by the main-belt comet.

This pioneering journey is expected to advance our understanding of the origins, evolution and characteristics of these two types of small celestial bodies.

FRUITFUL SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Beyond these milestones, 2025 has also yielded a wealth of groundbreaking scientific results from China's space station and lunar exploration programs.

The Shenzhou XIX mission delivered pioneering advances in fundamental physics and biology. Its crew achieved the first orbital preparation of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates using an all-optical trap, and established the world's first space-based optical lattice platform for quantum simulations, cooling atoms to temperatures of tens of picokelvins. In the field of biology, the astronauts successfully bred three generations of fruit flies in orbit, amassing rich data on their growth and behavior for post-flight analysis on the effects of microgravity and hypomagnetic fields on organisms.

The Shenzhou XX crew achieved significant results in multiple fields. They grew high-quality protein crystals with potential applications in tumor therapy, set a world record by heating a tungsten alloy to 3,100 degrees Celsius for the purpose of materials science, and made the first microgravity observation of charged colloids forming long-lived metastable structures through crystallization.

The crew returned to Earth with invaluable biological subjects -- "mice astronauts," which were the first mammalian test subjects in the station. The mice, which were monitored throughout their time in orbit, will provide critical data on behavioral and physiological adaptations. Scientists will analyze the data to study the subjects' acute responses and adaptive changes to space conditions, contributing to space biology research.

Lunar research has also yielded crucial results this year. The first experimental "lunar soil bricks" were returned to Earth aboard the Shenzhou XXI spacecraft after a year of exposure to the harsh space environment.

This was a step forward in engineering for China's long-term lunar program, which includes plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and construct a basic model of the International Lunar Research Station by 2035.

Next, scientists plan to analyze the returned bricks to understand how the space environment has altered their structure and properties.

This data is vital for the creation of accurate models to predict the long-term durability and behavior of such materials in the actual lunar environment, providing the scientific foundations for future extraterrestrial construction.

Additionally, analysis of soil samples collected from the far side of the moon by China's Chang'e 6 lunar probe has helped scientists discover that the mantle there is cooler than the mantle of the moon's near side.

This discovery provides petrological and geochemical evidence of a temperature contrast between the mantles of the moon's near and far sides, supplying a critical dataset needed to elucidate the moon's evolution.