China's Shenzhou-16 crew is scheduled to return to the Dongfeng landing site in the Gobi Desert, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on October 31, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced on Wednesday at a press conference. 

The crew members Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao were sent to China's space station on May 30 this year for a five-month mission.

Some space projects undertaken by the Shenzhou-16 crew have achieved interim results, said the CMSA.

"Thanks to the close collaboration between the astronauts and ground scientists and technicians, the space application projects are advancing steadily according to the plan," Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the CMSA, said at the press conference.

A total of 70 experiments in space medicine, life ecology, biotechnology, material science, fluid physics, fluid mechanics and space technology, as well as eight research projects on human factors engineering were carried out. A large amount of valuable experiment data was acquired, and some testing samples will be brought to Earth aboard the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft.

Lin said that during the current mission, the Shenzhou-16 crew members have successfully completed an extravehicular activity, a space lecture, several payload missions outside the space station cabin, and cooperated in the departure of the Tianzhou-5 cargo ship from the space station, adding that the mission also did a good job on supplies management.

"The crew has fully completed the inventory and organization of in-orbit materials, and developed a brand new method for the storage of goods and information management, which has set up a new standard for the following management of in-orbit supplies of the space station," Lin said.

In addition, the Shenzhou-16 crew will hold HD cameras and take pictures of the space station onboard the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft based on the light condition, before returning to Earth. They are expected to obtain the first full picture of the space station with Earth as the background for the first time in orbit.