By Eduardo Baptista

BEIJING (Reuters) -China has begun preparations to send a Shenzhou spacecraft to its permanently inhabited space station ahead of schedule, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday.

Shenzhou-22 is being sent without anyone on board to the Tiangong space station six months ahead of its planned launch in order to put China’s manned space programme back on track.

The Shenzhou missions have run like clockwork since 2021 until ten days ago when Shenzhou-20 was damaged while docked at Tiangong, forcing its three-person crew to stay an extra nine days along with another trio of astronauts.

On Friday, the Shenzhou-20 crew boarded the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft and successfully returned to Earth, leaving the newly arrived trio of astronauts who had arrived two weeks ago witho

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