Earlier this month, the China Manned Space Agency was forced to delay the return of three astronauts from its Tiangong space station after they discovered “tiny cracks” in their return capsule’s window, likely from a space debris strike.

Instead of using the damaged Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, which remains docked at the station, the crew took the only other spacecraft available to them for their November 14 return: the Shenzhou-21, which had arrived at the station in late October with a replacement crew aboard.

That left the new crew that’d arrived on the Shenzhou-21 in a pickle, though, because the craft they’d ridden to the station had now departed, leaving them with no place to shelter or return to Earth in case of an emergency, such as another space debris collision or unexpected equipm

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