Shanghai - Three Chinese astronauts, including a female crew member returned to earth on Saturday after 183 days in space, state television reported. The mission is the longest country's longest crewed space mission to date.

Following their launch in October, the astronauts - Zhai Zhigang, Ye Guangfu and a female crew member Wang Yaping - spent 183 days in space, completing the fifth of 11 missions needed to finish China's first space station by the end of the year.

The astronauts landed nine hours after they left a key module of the space station, construction of which began last April.

While in orbit, the Shenzhou-13 mission astronauts took manual control in the Tianhe living quarters module for what state media called a "docking experiment" with the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft.

Barred by the United States from partaking in the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit, China spent the past decade developing technologies to build its own space station, the only one in the world other than the ISS.

China, which aims to become a space power by 2030, has successfully launched probes to explore Mars and became the first country to land a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.
-AP