China purposely delayed the return of its Shenzhou 20 crew from the country's Tiangong space station recently. The reason: a suspected impact of space debris that cracked a window of the crew's return vessel.
Chinese space officials labeled the Nov. 5 wave-off of the crew's return to Earth as the first successful implementation of an "alternative return procedure" in the history of the nation's space station program. The trio of taikonauts did return to Earth, in a fresh but "borrowed" Shenzhou 21 spacecraft on Nov. 14. But doing so left the three-person Shenzhou 21 crew with a damaged and docked vehicle that has been deemed unsafe for reentry.
