China saw the completion of its longest manned space mission on June 26 as the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft and three crew members touched down at 8:07 a.m. EDT in Mongolia.
After spending 15 days in orbit, the three astronauts were given a hero's return, having completed a journey that, according to China's official press agency Xinhua, marks a major step toward the country's goal of building a permanent manned space station by 2020.
"We are dreamers, and we have now fulfilled our dream," commented Zhang Youxia, commander-in-chief of China's manned space program. "Our space dream knows no boundary, and our hard work will never cease."
Nie Haisheng, commander of the crew, said upon his return that it felt "really good" to be back.
Based on the mission's success, which included docking with the orbiting space lab Tiangong-1 both in auto and manual mode, the space agency said it will move forward with plans to place an experimental core module of a space station in orbit around 2018.
China is the third country after the United States and Russia to perform a space rendezvous and docking procedures.
Prior to 2020, China plans on launching a series of cargo and manned spacecraft to deliver materials and transport astronauts to the future space lab and space station, according to Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space program office.
Tiangong-1 has been in orbit for more than 600 days and will be replaced, according to China's space agency, by Tiangong-2 in 2015.
In order to carry out these missions China officials said they will employ a new generation of rockets featuring larger carrying capacities as well as new technologies, such as new engines with non-toxic and non-polluting liquefied propellant.
While in space, the Shenzhou-10 crew gave a lecture on microgravity to an estimated 60 million students and teachers at approximately 80,000 schools throughout the country. The lecture included several demonstrations in addition to an exchange of questions and answers between the students and astronauts.
Since its first manned space mission in 2003, China has sent 10 astronauts and six spacecrafts into space. According to Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and an expert on the Chinese Space Program, the Chinese and U.S. space programs is a "classic tortoise and hare."
"China has an incremental plan, step by step, they are in no hurry, but it's also very ambitions," she told USA Today, adding that while China has flown fewer missions than the U.S. Apollo programs, they take "bigger steps" with each one.
"They read the Apollo playbook, and know all the things the U.S. got from a human space program, she explained.