Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Astronauts Liu Yang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang landed the capsule

A Chinese space capsule carrying three crew members has returned to Earth following a 13-day mission.

Images of the capsule landing in Inner Mongolia at 10:05 local time (02:05 GMT) were shown live on television.

The astronauts, including China's first woman in space, carried out a successful manual docking with the Tiangong-1 laboratory module.

The mission is a key step towards China's goal of building a space station by 2020.

Premier Wen Jiabao hailed the mission as a "complete success".

Analysis The smiles said it all. Jing Haipeng, commander of the Shenzhou-9 crew, was the first to emerge from the return capsule, followed by his flight engineers Liu Wang and the country's first womanThursday and performed a manual separation from the space laboratory.

They touched down in Inner Mongolia's Siziwang county, with the capsule deploying a parachute to slow its approach.

Image caption A parachute slowed the capsule's descent to Earth

All the astronauts were in good health, state-run news agency Xinhua reported. They were shown on CCTV leaving the capsule carried on chairs, smiling as they waved to supporters.

The crew included Jing Haipeng, 45, the mission commander and a veteran astronaut, Liu Yang, 33, and Liu Wang, 43, who performed the manual docking.

Ms Liu, 33, is a major in China's air force from the central province of Henan. On China's Tencent QQ messaging service, she goes by the name "little Flying Knight".

She was recruited into China's space programme only two years ago, but