The landing zone for the orbiting Shenzhou-9 spacecraft has gone into operation. Personnel and equipment that are responsible for retrieval search and rescue missions have arrived at the area in Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia. The weather at the zone is forecast to be sunny on Friday when the capsule returns.

The three astronauts on board conducted China's first manual space docking procedure on Sunday with the Tiangong-1 lab module. The landing zone has been used for all previous Shenzhou space missions.