The three astronauts on the country's fifth and longest manned mission are expected to complete their trip and return to Earth at around 8 am on Wednesday.

Before its return, the manned Shenzhou X spacecraft conducted the country's first test flight around the Tiangong-1 space module on Tuesday, as future vessels will need to dock from more than one direction.

On Tuesday morning, the astronauts left the orbiting space module where they had lived for 12 days.