China - Astronauts Finish Mission and Return to Earth - NYTimes.com China's first female astronaut and two other crew members returned safely to Earth on Friday from a 13-day mission to an orbiting module that is a prototype for a future space station. Their spacecraft, the Shenzhou 9, parachuted to a landing on the grasslands of the Inner Mongolia region around 10 a.m. China declared the first manned mission to the Tiangong 1 module, the space program's longest and most challenging yet, a major step for the country's ambitious program. The mission was carried out by the astronauts Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and Liu Yang, above, China's first woman in space, and it included both remote control and piloted dockings with the module and extensive medical monitoring of the astronauts as part of preparations for a permanent space station.