Animation shows how the Chinese Taikonauts return to Earth. |

China’s spacecraft Shenzhou-12, which is carrying the three Chinese astronauts back to the Earth after their fulfillment of the nation’s longest manned space mission so far, is set to touch down at the predetermined landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region later Friday. After separating from the space station core module Tianhe at 08:56 Beijing Time (0056 GMT) on Thursday, the manned spacecraft has completed the circumnavigation and radial rendezvous tests later in the day. The three astronauts — Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo — have lived and worked in Tianhe for 90 days, the longest stay in space by Chinese astronauts, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). So far, a ground search and rescue team has been ready for the return of the crew members on board the spacecraft. After an attitude adjustment, the reentry capsule of the manned spaceship will separate with the orbiting capsule. The reentry capsule, then, will perform attitude adjustment before separating itself from the propelling module to re-enter the atmosphere of the Earth, beginning its last journey back home. Communication between the return capsule of spacecraft and the ground control center will be cut off temporarily, of about four to six minutes after the capsule enter the black-out area, at around 80 to 100 km above the Earth, The pilot parachute, deceleration parachute, as well as the main parachute of return capsule will be successively deployed after the spacecraft got out of the black-out area and lowered to around 10 km above the ground. The reverse thrust engine will start when the return capsule reaches to only one meter above the ground, to reduce the descending speed to less than two meters per second. The astronauts will cut off the parachutes once they get out off the hatch, to ensure the safety of the return capsule until handing it over to the ground team. Before the return journey, the astronauts had completed various works, such as setting the status of the combination of the core module and the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, sorting and downloading experiment data, and clearing and transferring supplies kept in orbit, with support from sci-tech staff on the ground, the CMSA said. The three Chinese astronauts were sent into space onboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship and entered Tianhe on June 17. The crew carried out extravehicular activities twice over the past 90 days.