Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth after 90 days on Beijing's budding space station

Beijing — A trio of Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a 90-day stay aboard their nation's first space station in China's longest mission yet.

Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo landed in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship just after 1:30 p.m. local time (1:30 a.m. EDT Friday) after having undocked from the space station Thursday morning.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of the spacecraft parachuting to land in the Gobi Desert,where it was met by helicopters and off-road vehicles. Minutes later, a crew of technicians began opening the hatch of the capsule, which appeared undamaged.