China continues to send signs of its desire to be a Nation that matters in the conquest of space.
Astronaut Wang Yaping on Monday became the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk, which was intended to continue construction of the Asian giant's space station.
A 41-year-old pilot and Air Force colonel, she is part of the Shenzhou-13 mission, launched in mid-October.
The crew, also made up of two male astronauts, will stay six months in Tianhe (“Heavenly Harmony”), the only module already in orbit of the three that will eventually constitute the space station.
Their mission is to continue the construction of this station and also to test their capacity to withstand this long stay in weightlessness, which will put their bodies to the test.
Planned tasks "successfully completed"
Alongside General Zhai Zhigang, 55, mission commander, Wang Yaping carried out an extra-vehicular outing from Sunday to Monday on the night of Sunday to Monday, said the space agency in charge of manned flights (CMSA). The objective of this outing was to install new elements of an external robotic arm, to ensure the reliability of the equipment or to test new generation space suits. “All the planned tasks have been successfully completed,” CMSA stressed.
Third extra-vehicular outing aboard Tianhe, this is the first for the Shenzhou-13 crew, which should carry out one, or even two more, in the coming months.
Wang Yaping had already made a first trip to space in 2013, which made her the second Chinese in space.
Known for having given during her previous stay a live physics lesson to 60 million schoolchildren thanks to a video link, she will repeat the experience during Shenzhou-13.
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