INTERNATIONAL: 41-year-old Wang Yaping on Monday became the first Chinese woman astronaut to walk in space as she moved out of the under-construction space station and took part in extravehicular activities for over six hours along with her male colleague mission commander Zhai Zhigang.
As of 8:28 Sunday night, Beijing time, Wang together with Zhai of China’s Shenzhou-13 mission have flown out of the Tiangong space station in the country's latest generation of spacesuits top conduct their first outing activities, marking the historic moment in China's space program.
Astronaut Ye Guangfu has supported in the cabin. The outbound activity took six hours.
Wang has reported that she was in good condition when communicating with the ground control, which refers to itself as "Shuangguang.” Shuguang is the project name of China's planned manned space mission back in the 1970s, meaning "the dawn" in Chinese. Due to the lack of necessary conditions in the 1970s, the "Project Shuguang" never materialized. But the name has being used today to represent "Ground control" during the Shenzhou-13 mission.
The Shenzhou-13 mission crew was launched on Oct 16 by a Long March 2F carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gobi Desert and soon entered the Tianhe module, which is the first, and central, section of the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space station. They are scheduled to undertake a six-month journey inside the station, fulfilling the nation's longest space mission so far. In 2012, China became the third nation to send women into space with its own space program, after the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States.
