Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 6 months on space station

A Chinese spacecraft has returned to Earth with three astronauts who lived for six months on the country's space station. BEIJING - A Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth on Tuesday with three astronauts who completed a six-month mission aboard the country's orbiting space station. China built its own space station after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns over the Chinese military's total control of the space program amid a sharpening competition in technology between the two geopolitical rivals. China's ambitious space program aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, as well as bring back samples from Mars around the same year and launch three lunar probe missions over the next four years. They will spend about six months on the three modules of the space station, the Tiangong, which can accommodate up to six astronauts at a time. China has also said that it eventually plans to offer access to its space station to foreign astronauts and space tourists. China conducted its first crewed space mission in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to put a person into space using its own resources.