Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth on Saturday after 183 days in space, state television reported, completing the country's longest crewed space mission to date.

The astronauts landed nine hours after they left a key module of China's first space station.

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.

Following their launch in October...