BEIJING, Nov 8 (PTI): Chinese military pilot Wang Yaping scripted history on Monday when she became the country’s first woman astronaut to walk in space as she moved out of the under-construction space station and took part in extravehicular activities along with her male colleague, the official media here reported.
Wang and Zhai Zhigang moved out of the space station core module called Tianhe and spent 6.5 hours of the spacewalk in the early hours of Monday and successfully returned to the module, Xinhua news agency reported.
This marks the first spacewalk in Chinese space history involving a woman astronaut, the China Manned Space Agency said in a statement.
China had launched the Shenzhou-13 spaceship on October 16, sending three astronauts on a six-month mission to the under-construction space station, which was expected to be ready by next year.
The 41-year-old native of Shandong province and mother of a five-year-old girl, Wang joined the People’s Liberation Army Air Force in August 1997 and served as a deputy squadron commander before joining the second group of astronauts at the PLA Astronaut Division in May 2010.
In March 2012, she was part of the backup crew for the ninth manned Shenzhou mission series in June 2013 and took part in the 10th of Shenzhou series which lasted nearly 15 days. She is the second Chinese woman to have flown in space.
During the Shenzhou 10th flight, Wang gave China’s first space-based lecture inside the Tiangong I experimental module to more than 60 million Chinese students at about 80,000 schools across the country.
She was selected for the present manned space mission in December 2019.
Wang’s achievement has expanded the team of global female astronauts who have conducted spacewalks.
Before Wang, as of October 2019, a total of 15 women had participated in 42 spacewalks since 1984, when cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space, state-run Global Times reported.
“Women’s participation in extravehicular activities is an integral part of manned space, and we are witnessing history thanks to Wang’s bravery,” Yang Yuguang, Vice-Chair of Space Transportation Committee for International Astronautical Federation, told the Global Times.
There is little difference between men and women in terms of requirements for conducting a spacewalk, and the only thing that needs adjustment would be the spacesuit, which must be tailored to the female body to enable them carry out their work with precision, space experts told the daily.
While Wang and Zhai conducted the extravehicular activities, which included the spacewalk on Monday, the third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu played a supporting role from within the module.
The pair returned to the core module at 1:16 AM (Beijing Time) after successfully completing their task in about 6.5 hours, the statement said.