Science
Footprints show some two-legged dinosaurs were agile
Not all two-legged dinosaurs were like the lumbering Tyrannosaurus rex.
An analysis of dinosaur tracks from 120 million years ago unearthed in Spain adds to growing evidence that these meat-eating prehistoric beasts belonging to the same group as T.rex could be highly agile.
The findings, published Thursday in Scientific Reports, reveal one of the fastest known sets of fossilized dinosaur footprints.
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These tracks join the ranks of other speedy sets found in Utah and Texas, one of which shows dinosaurs running at speeds over 30 mph. The Spanish footprints showed speeds of nearly 28 mph.
To calculate the running speed, scientists measured the length of the footprint and took into account the dinosaur's hip height and stride length — the distance between two consecutive footprints of the same foot.
All of the fastest known sets of prints come from a family of dinosaurs called theropods. These carnivorous dinosaurs stood on two legs and could not fly, like the famed velociraptor. The animals that created the most recent impressions were probably 5 to 6 1/2 feet tall and 13 to 16 feet long from mouth to tail, the researchers estimated.
Scientists think there may be other faster dinosaurs, but the tracks of theropods have been easier to track down.
“Behavior is something very difficult to study in dinosaurs,” said lead author Pablo Navarro-Lorbés of the University of La Rioja. “These kind of findings are very important, I think, for improving that kind of knowledge.”
Also read: Dinosaur footprints found in ancient Chinese imperial resort
Scientists typically predict dinosaur behavior through computer modeling of the creatures' movement. Physical examination of fossilized footprints confirm the results.
These are “clearly active, agile animals," said Smithsonian paleontologist Hans Sues, who had no role in the study.
Darwin in a lab: Coral evolution tweaked for global warming
On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef.
Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes.
In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.
For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they're getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in Nature.
“Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing,” said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project's manager.
SPEEDING UP NATURE
Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient:
— Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents.
— Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures.
— And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients.
Hughes said the methods all have proven successful in the lab.
And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with Nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. “We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future,” she said.
When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors. The coral turns white — a process called bleaching — and can quickly become sick and die.
Read:In California, some buy machines that make water out of air
For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef.
So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii's reefs.
“Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe,” said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab. “And so that’s what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.”
A NOVEL IDEA
In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world's worst bleaching events.
The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program.
“We’ve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive,” Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview.
Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how “intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.”
Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.
A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world's coral reefs. Scientists found that between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14% of its coral.
Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed.
Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were “playing gods” by tampering with the reef.
“Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time,” van Oppen said. “All we’re trying to do is to repair the damage.”
Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. “We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there."
Read:Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico
MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING
Still, there are lingering questions.
“We have discovered lots of reasons why corals don’t bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. “Just because you find a coral that isn’t bleaching in the field or in the lab doesn’t mean it’s permanently heat tolerant.”
Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.
“This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat,” Palumbi said. “So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that there’s some disadvantage to it. And if there weren’t a disadvantage, they’d all be heat resistant.”
But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because “reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.”
The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. The U.S. government also backs the effort.
Assisted evolution "is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences,” said Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program.
“We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management,” Koss said. “And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.”
MAJOR HURDLES
There are still serious challenges.
Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.
James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.
“It’s great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way,” Guest said.
Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.
No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the world’s reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures – with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.
The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention.
Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some corals with modified symbiotic algae back on the Great Barrier Reef.
With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs.
“All the work we are going to do here,” said Hawaii's Drury, “is not going to make a difference if we don’t wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale.
“So really, what we’re trying to do is buy time.”
Jute Sanitary Napkins: Bangladeshi scientist Farhana Sultana got awarded for eco-friendly innovation
Farhana Sultana, an assistant scientist at icddr,b, has received the grand award for her suggested innovation, which involves building a machine to create jute cellulose-based disposable sanitary pads for long-term menstrual health. For women and girls in Bangladesh, it offers an alternate solution for menstrual health and hygiene. Ms Sultana designed and piloted the jute cellulose-based disposable pad in partnership with Dr Mubarak Ahmed Khan, scientific advisor at Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation, according to an icddr,b announcement on its official Facebook page.
Jute-Based Sanitary Pad made in Bangladesh
Farhana Sultana has been the primary researcher for a number of menstruation management programs. The Islamic Development Bank gave her a $100,000 (Tk 8.4 million) grant to create jute napkins, minimizing the usage of plastics. For a long time, Farhana Sultana and her colleagues have been focusing on menstruation management. The researches have led them to finally propose the idea of jute cellulose-based sanitary pads for women and girls.
Read 'Golden fibre' no longer holds glitter for Khulna jute farmers
Tishan Mahfuz, a team intern researcher, said they put biometric devices in four schools in Dhaka and Manikganj to find out why female students were missing classes. According to Tishan, the percentage of absences decreased when plans were made to provide sanitary napkins in the school.
Who is Farhana Sultana?
Bangladeshi scientist Farhana Sultana is currently involved with the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene research group at International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Her mission is to reduce the burden of communicable illnesses in Bangladesh by designing, testing, and implementing low-cost and long-term interventions in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sectors among low-income and high-risk individuals.
Read BUILD explores producing paper pulp from whole jute plant
Four station astronauts catch ride with SpaceX back home
Four astronauts in orbit since spring headed back to Earth on Monday, aiming for a late night splashdown off the Florida coast.
The undocking of their SpaceX capsule from the International Space Station also paved the way for a launch of their four replacements as early as Wednesday night.
Read:China's 1st woman to spacewalk works 6 hours outside station
The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronaut's undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and France's Thomas Pesquet should have been back Monday morning, but high wind in the recovery zone delayed their homecoming. Their splashdown was planned for the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola.
“One more night with this magical view. Who could complain? I’ll miss our spaceship!” Pesquet tweeted alongside a brief video showing the space station illuminated against the blackness of space and the twinkling city lights on the nighttime side of Earth.
From the space station, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei -- midway through a one-year flight -- bid farewell to each of his departing friends, telling McArthur "I’ll miss hearing your laughter in adjacent modules.”
Before leaving the neighborhood, the four took a spin around the space station to take pictures. This was the first time SpaceX attempted a flyaround like this; NASA's shuttles used to do it all the time before their retirement a decade ago.
Read: Russian filmmakers land after shoot aboard space station
It wasn't the most comfortable ride back. The toilet in their capsule was broken, and so the astronauts needed to rely on diapers for the eight-hour trip home. They shrugged it off late last week as just one more challenge in their mission.
The first issue arose shortly after their April liftoff; Mission Control warned a piece of space junk was threatening to collide with their capsule. It turned out to be a false alarm. Then in July, thrusters on a newly arrived Russian lab inadvertently fired and sent the station into a spin. The four astronauts took shelter in their docked SpaceX capsule, ready to make a hasty departure if necessary.
Among the upbeat milestones: four spacewalks to enhance the station's solar power, a movie-making visit by a Russian film crew and the first-ever space harvest of chile peppers. Their 200-day mission began last April.
China's 1st woman to spacewalk works 6 hours outside station
Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station.
Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space agency.
Read: Russian filmmakers land after shoot aboard space station
The third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu, assisted from inside the station, CMS said on its website.
Wang, 41, and Zhai, 55, had both traveled to China’s now-retired experimental space stations, and Zhai conducted China’s first spacewalk 13 years ago.
The three are the second crew on the permanent station, and the mission that began with their arrival Oct. 16 is scheduled to be the longest stretch of time in space yet for Chinese astronauts.
The Tianhe module of the station will be connected next year to two more sections named Mengtian and Wentian. The completed station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons.
Read:China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station
Three spacewalks are planned to install equipment in preparation for the station's expansion, while the crew will also assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct experiments in space medicine and other fields.
China’s military-run space program plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional.
Telangana's 'Medicines From The Sky' project utilizes drones in health care
Drones are commonly used for surveillance or photography. But if it is said that the lifesaving medicines will be delivered by drones, it is normal to get surprised! The Govt of Telangana is thinking of such an initiative, which is called 'Medicine From The Sky.’ With the help of this initiative of the Telangana government, drones will be able to reach different parts of the state with medicines, vaccines, blood, various samples for lab tests, and various medical supplies. The project was launched on September 11, 2021, from the Vikarabad district of Telangana. The Telangana government has already obtained clearance from the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
What is Medicine from the Sky (MFTS)?
This project is initiated by the state IT department’s Emerging Technologies Wing which has a partnership with the World Economic Forum, NITI Aayog, and HealthNet Global. The goal of MFTS is to experiment with Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flights for vaccine delivery using the Vikarabad district air space.
Read Digital Healthcare Startups in Bangladesh: An Overview
In 2020, the Telangana government has signed a partnership with the World Economic Forum to start the MFTS project. Later they released an expression of interest (EOI) to identify the drones’ capability to provide accurate, safe and dependable pickup as well as delivery of the health care products. However, about 16 consortia or logistic farms and drone operators showed interest in the project and the government shortlisted 8 of them.
India never initiated this kind of project before and it is believed to be the first organized BVLOS drone trial in the country. Moreover, it is also the first initiative in the healthcare domain.
Before the launching event three consortia Hepicopter Consortium (Marut Drones), Bluedart Med Express Consortium (Skye Air), and CurisFly Consortium (TechEagle Innovations) reached Vikarabad for test flights. After the launch, all the eight consortia will continue testing for long-distance travel and heavier payloads to see the reliability.
Read Top health apps for online doctor consultation services in Bangladesh
What are the opportunities?
Although drones are widely used for photography, video shot, mapping, and other operations. But, the current COVID-19 pandemic has increased the scope of using drones beyond the limit. As per the published plan, the selected consortia will demonstrate BVLOS flights’ utilization in the Vikarabad district. They will use the Government Area Hospital to take off and different primary health centers (PHC) and sub-centers will be landing sites.
So, the startups and private sector firms can collaborate with the state government and integrate with the government healthcare system to improve the traditional delivery system for the life-saving elements. Thinking of the ongoing pandemic, the medicine from the sky project can give access to healthcare centers in rural and remote locations.
Hepicopter consortium, one of the selected consortiums, has mentioned that India can use up to five UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle) or drones per district with a range of 40km. Within this distance, the payload can be up to 15 kg with an endurance of two hours. As per the assumption, the government can cover 718 districts in India using 3600 drones and distribute 15,000 kg vaccines in a single day.
Read Online Pharmacy: Where to Buy Medicine in Dhaka during Coronavirus Home Quarantine
In California, some buy machines that make water out of air
The machine Ted Bowman helped design can make water out of the air, and in parched California, some homeowners are already buying the pricey devices.
The air-to-water systems work like air conditioners by using coils to chill air, then collect water drops in a basin.
“Our motto is, water from air isn’t magic, it’s science, and that’s really what we’re doing with these machines," said Ted Bowman, design engineer at Washington state-based Tsunami Products.
Read:Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico
The system is one of several that have been developed in recent years to extract water from humidity in the air. Other inventions include mesh nets, solar panels and shipping containers that harvest moisture from the air.
Bowman said his company's machines — made for use at homes, offices, ranches and elsewhere — dehumidify the air and in doing so create water that's filtered to make it drinkable.
The technology works especially well in foggy areas and depending on the size can produce between 200 gallons (900 liters) and 1,900 gallons (8,600 liters) of water a day. The machines also operate efficiently in any area with high humidity, including California’s coastline, he said.
The machines are not cheap, with prices ranging from $30,000 to $200,000. Still, in California, where residents have been asked to conserve water because one of the worst droughts in recent history has depleted reservoirs, some homeowners are buying them to meet their water needs.
Don Johnson, of Benicia, California, said he bought the smallest machine, which looks like a towering AC unit, hoping it would generate sufficient water to sustain his garden. But he found it puts out more than enough for his garden and his household.
“This machine will produce water for a lot less than you can buy bottled water at Costco for, and I believe, as time goes on and the price of freshwater through our utilities goes up, I think it’s going to more than pay for itself," he said.
Read:Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown
Besides the high price tag, the unit also requires a significant amount of energy to run. But Johnson said the solar panels on his roof produce enough power to operate the machine without additional energy costs.
Experts like University of California, Davis hydrology researcher Helen Dahlke said the technology makes sense for individual homeowners, especially in rural areas. But she said it is not a practical solution for California's broader water woes.
Dahlke said the focus should be on fighting global warming to prevent future droughts.
“We really actually need to curb climate warming to really make a difference again," she said.
Oldest human footprints in North America found in New Mexico
Fossilized footprints discovered in New Mexico indicate that early humans were walking across North America around 23,000 years ago, researchers reported Thursday.
The first footprints were found in a dry lake bed in White Sands National Park in 2009. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey recently analyzed seeds stuck in the footprints to determine their approximate age, ranging from around 22,800 and 21,130 years ago.
The findings may shed light on a mystery that has long intrigued scientists: When did people first arrive in the Americas, after dispersing from Africa and Asia?
Also read: Egypt team identifies fossil of land-roaming whale species
Most scientists believe ancient migration came by way of a now-submerged land bridge that connected Asia to Alaska. Based on various evidence — including stone tools, fossil bones and genetic analysis — other researchers have offered a range of possible dates for human arrival in the Americas, from 13,000 to 26,000 years ago or more.
The current study provides a more solid baseline for when humans definitely were in North America, although they could have arrived even earlier, the authors say. Fossil footprints are more indisputable and direct evidence than “cultural artifacts, modified bones, or other more conventional fossils,” they wrote in the journal Science, which published the study Thursday.
“What we present here is evidence of a firm time and location,” they said.
Based on the size of the footprints, researchers believe that at least some were made by children and teenagers who lived during the last ice age.
David Bustos, the park's resource program manager, spotted the first footprints in ancient wetlands in 2009. He and others found more in the park over the years.
Also read: Fossil leaves may reveal climate in last era of dinosaurs
“We knew they were old, but we had no way to date the prints before we discovered some with (seeds) on top,” he said Thursday.
Made of fine silt and clay, the footprints are fragile, so the researchers had to work quickly to gather samples, Bustos said.
“The only way we can save them is to record them — to take a lot of photos and make 3D models,” he said.
Earlier excavations in White Sands National Park have uncovered fossilized tracks left by a saber-toothed cat, dire wolf, Columbian mammoth and other ice age animals.
Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown
Four space tourists safely ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.
The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut.
The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.
“Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
Read:China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station
“It was a heck of a ride for us ... just getting started,” replied trip sponsor Jared Isaacman, referring to the growing number of private flights on the horizon.
SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles (585 kilometers) after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles (160 kilometers), the passengers savored views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.
The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travelers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s two previous crew splashdowns — carrying astronauts for NASA — were in the Gulf of Mexico.
Within a few minutes, a pair of SpaceX boats pulled up alongside the bobbing capsule. When the capsule’s hatch was opened on the recovery ship, health care worker Hayley Arceneaux was the first one out, flashing a big smile and thumbs up.
All appeared well and happy.
Their families were waiting near the scene of Wednesday night’s launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
This time, NASA was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy launch pad once used for the Apollo moonshots and shuttle crews, but now leased by SpaceX.
Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, aimed to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Donating $100 million himself, he held a lottery for one of the four seats. Late Saturday, Musk tweeted he was donating $50 million, putting them over the top.
For the last seat, Isaacman held a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments.
Read:SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
Joining him on the flight were Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated at the Memphis, Tennessee hospital nearly two decades ago for bone cancer, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist and artist from Tempe, Arizona.
“Best ride of my life!” Proctor tweeted a few hours after splashdown.
Strangers until March, the four spent six months training and preparing for potential emergencies during the flight — but there was no need to step in, officials said after their return. During the trip dubbed Inspiration4, they had time to chat with St. Jude patients, conduct medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange and do some drawing and ukulele playing.
Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, “I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this.”
They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2′s Bono.
Even their space menu wasn’t typical: Cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.
Before beginning descent, Sembroski was so calm that he was seen in the capsule watching the 1987 Mel Brooks’ film “Spaceballs” on his tablet.
“What an amazing adventure!” he tweeted.
Congratulations streamed in, including from the Association of Space Explorers to its four newest members.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
Aside from trouble with a toilet fan and a bad temperature sensor in an engine, the flight went exceedingly well, officials said. Some of the four passengers experienced motion sickness when they reached orbit — just as some astronauts do.
“It was a very clean mission from start to finish,” said Benji Reed, a SpaceX senior director.
Reed anticipates as many as six private flights a year for SpaceX, sandwiched between astronaut launches for NASA. Four SpaceX flights are already booked to carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former NASA astronauts. The first is targeted for early next year with three businessmen paying $55 million apiece. Russia also plans to take up an actor and film director for filming next month and a Japanese tycoon in December.
Customers interested in quick space trips are turning to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two rode their own rockets to the fringes of space in July to spur ticket sales; their flights lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
The 60-year scorecard now stands at 591 people who have reached space or its edges — and is expected to skyrocket as space tourism heats up.
China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station
A trio of Chinese astronauts returned to earth Friday after a 90-day stay aboard their nation’s first space station in China’s longest mission yet.
Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo landed in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship just after 1:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) after having undocked from the space station Thursday morning.
Read:SpaceX launches 4 amateurs on private Earth-circling trip
State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of the spacecraft parachuting to land in the Gobi Desert where it was met by helicopters and off-road vehicles. Minutes later, a crew of technicians began opening the hatch of the capsule, which appeared undamaged.
After launching on June 17, mission commander Nie and astronauts Liu and Tang went on two spacewalks, deployed a 10-meter (33-foot) mechanical arm, and had a video call with Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
While few details have been made public by China’s military, which runs the space program, astronaut trios are expected to be brought on 90-day missions to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional.
The government has not announced the names of the next set of astronauts nor the launch date of Shenzhou-13.
Read:4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight
China has sent 14 astronauts into space since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own.
China embarked on its own space station program after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. objections to the Chinese space program's secrecy and military backing.