Shenzhou 21 Crew Observes Lunar New Year Aboard Tiangong Station Amid Scientific Progress

The three-person crew of China's Shenzhou 21 mission marked the 2026 Lunar New Year, the Year of the Horse, while aboard the Tiangong Space Station, maintaining an orbital altitude of approximately 400 kilometers. The observance of the cultural holiday, which began on Tuesday, February 17th, and traditionally concludes with the Lantern Festival on March 3rd, 2026, took place over 100 days into the crew's mission. The crew—Commander Zhang Lu, Flight Engineer Wu Fei, and Payload Specialist Zhang Hongzhang—arrived at the station in late 2025.

The in-orbit celebration adapted traditional customs for the microgravity environment, featuring a specially baked cake from the station's oven, alongside customary dumplings, calligraphy materials, and red decorative lanterns. Commander Zhang Lu, celebrating his second Lunar New Year in space, led the crew in filming a zero-gravity music video that included a lyrical tribute to recent Chinese achievements in rocketry and orbital docking procedures. The Shenzhou 21 mission launched on October 31, 2025, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center atop a Long March 2F rocket, with the docking process setting a national record by completing in approximately three hours and 30 minutes.

During their tenure, the crew has been engaged in executing 27 new scientific and application projects as directed by the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). A central component of this research involves the first in-orbit study by China utilizing live mammals: four mice transported to the station to investigate the effects of microgravity and confinement on rodent behavior. The mice were later returned to Earth aboard the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft on December 10, 2025, with subsequent analysis expected to yield valuable data on mammalian fertility and early-life development in space, including one female that delivered nine pups post-return.

The Tiangong station has maintained continuous human occupation since June 2021, a commitment the CMSA intends to uphold for at least a decade. The crew also managed an operational challenge late in 2025 involving suspected space debris impacting a docked spacecraft, which necessitated the rapid launch of an uncrewed capsule to serve as an emergency lifeboat. Flight Engineer Wu Fei and Payload Specialist Zhang Hongzhang, a researcher from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, concluded their greetings by extending wishes for a secure trajectory forward and the continued prosperity of China's scientific and technological endeavors.