Three Chinese astronauts whose journey home was delayed after space debris struck their spacecraft landed safely in China on Friday afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said “tiny cracks” were found in a small window of the Shenzhou-20 return capsule last week, prompting officials to postpone the crew’s scheduled November 5 return.

The astronauts had completed a six-month mission aboard China’s permanently inhabited Tiangong space station . After the damage was detected, the crew departed the station aboard a different spacecraft, Shenzhou-21, and touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia at 4:40 p.m. local time.

The mission, which began in April, had proceeded normally until the debris incident forced the change of return

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