Chinas Astronauts return to Earth after China's longest space mission

Three Chinese astronauts have returned to Earth after completing the country's longest crewed space mission. 

They spent 90 days at the Tianhe module on China's space station, some 380km (240 miles) above Earth. 

The three men had on Thursday boarded the Shenzhou-12 crewed spacecraft and undocked from the space station. The successful mission is another demonstration of China's growing confidence and capability in the space domain.

Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Honbo touched down in the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia at around 13:35 local time (05:35 GMT) on Friday. They had left for space on 17 June, and had lifted off from the same desert.

While in space, the three men completed various tasks including transmitting experiment data back to Earth and conducting hours-long spacewalks.