Terrifying New Details Emerge on Last Year's Stranding of Chinese Taikonauts

The Shenzhou-20 return capsule after it landed, sans taikonauts, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Jan. 19, 2026. Credit: Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

It's a scene in so many space movies: The actor looks out through a window at the vacuum of space, and watches as a crack slowly forms and stretches across the screen. This week, Space.com surfaced some interview footage (embedded below) with the Chinese taikonauts who lived through something almost as dramatic.

The incident occurred in November, when an anomaly aboard the Shenzhou 20 mission left three of them temporarily stranded in space.

"I was the one who went for checks," said mission commander Chen Dong (and I'll apologize here for the poor translations, which a Canadian like I certainly can't improve upon). "I was through the capsule with the naked eye when I spotted something like a triangular on ...