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Space junk strands astronauts on space station
BBC Sky at Night Magazine
|January 2026
Chinese crew couldn't risk re-entry after capsule damaged by debris
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The return of three Chinese astronauts from the Tiangong space station had to be aborted on 5 November, when the spacecraft destined to return them to Earth was hit by space debris.
The China Manned Space Agency reported "tiny cracks" in a window of the Shenzhou-20 return capsule, making it unsafe for re-entry.
This story is from the January 2026 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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