A Chinese space capsule carrying three crew members, has returned to Earth following a 13-day mission. The astronauts, including China's first woman in space, carried out a successful manual docking with the Tiangong-1 laboratory module earlier in the week. The delicate procedure, which involved bringing together two orbiting vessels traveling at thousands of miles an hour, was mastered by the USSR and US space teams in the 1960s. The crew also carried out automatic docking of the two crafts during their mission.

The three astronauts returned to the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft yesterday and performed a manual separation from the space laboratory. They touched down in Inner Mongolia's Siziwang county, at at 10:05 local time today with the capsule deploying a parachute to slow its approach. Images of the capsule landing were shown live on State television.

Premier Wen Jiabao hailed the mission as a complete success. Mr. Wen said this is another outstanding contribution by the Chinese people to humanity's efforts to explore and use space.