Shenzhou XVIII lands on earth concluding six-month mission

Ye and his teammates, who were the seventh crew to inhabit the Tiangong space station, took over the space station in late April from their peers in the Shenzhou XVII mission.

During their orbital stay, they conducted two spacewalks to mount and fine-tune equipment outside the Tiangong and carried out a lot of scientific and technological tasks.

It has been the second space journey for Ye and the first for his two crew members.

After the flight, Ye took over in the Chinese astronauts' group in terms of having spent the longest time in space, with a total of 374 days in orbit, across two space missions.

Before him, Tang Hongbo held the record for the longest in-orbit time of a Chinese astronaut after spending a total of 279 days through the Shenzhou XII and Shenzhou XVII missions.