Three astronauts circling the Earth in China's Tiangong-1 space lab have broken yet more ground, by making the country's first video call from space.

The 20-minute call with the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre occurred at around 6.50pm local time on Tuesday, and was meant both as an experiment in space communication and as a proof-of-concept system test.

Before the video call, the three Chinese astronauts co-operated with each other to adjust the location and mode of the hand-held camera in Tiangong-1 to film the received images and send them back to the control centre.

Whilst it may seem a simple enough process, making a video call from space can be difficult, with the craft orbiting at some 17,000 miles per hour.

The three astronauts, including the country's first female in space, entered the cabin of the Tiangong-1 on Monday afternoon, becoming the first Chinese crew to enter an orbiting platform in space.