No trip to space can be counted a success unless you make it safely back to Earth. That’s a lesson American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams learned when their intended eight-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024 wound up lasting nine months, due to thruster problems in their Boeing Starliner spacecraft that left them without a ride home. And it’s a lesson that was learned anew this week by the taikonauts—Chinese astronauts—Chen Dong, Chen Zhongrui, and Wang