After the Shenzhou-14 capsule successfully landed on the Dongfeng landing site in North China’s Inner Mongolia on Sunday, three astronauts came out from the capsule and were seated in dedicated chairs.

Chinese astronaut Liu Yang sits in a dedicated chair developed by a Nanshan-based company — ND Industrial Design — after exiting the Shenzhou-14 capsule. Xinhua

The special chairs used for transferring the taikonauts were designed and developed by a Nanshan-based company — ND Industrial Design, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

The company provided the chairs to take the Shenzhou-10 and Shenzhou-11 crew members after they returned to Earth and supplied updated products to serve the Shenzhou-13 taikonauts when they successfully completed their mission this April.

ND Industrial Design further improved the chairs used in the latest task through communication with an expert team from the Astronaut Center of China, adding more comfort and safety features to the chairs.

A staffer from the company said that the company selected outstanding designers to conduct research and innovation on the chairs. “Compared to the previous designs, the updated products are required to be used in wide scenarios, for example, in desert and specialized vehicles, and to adjust to quick temperature changes from freezing cold to warm places. It is full of challenges.”

The company is one of the earliest industrial design companies in China, and it was ranked as one of the 10 most innovative design studios in the world by Red Dot Design Award in 2012.