The crew of China’s orbiting space station has completed the first of several planned spacewalks of their six-month mission, pushing such activities into the realm of routine for the country’s astronauts.
The China Manned Space Agency said that, during yesterday’s seven-hour extravehicular activity, Fei Junlong (費俊龍) and Zhang Lu (張陸) carried out a number of tasks, including installing extension pumps outside the Mengtian laboratory module.
The third crew member of the Shenzhou-15 mission, Deng Qingming (鄧清明), assisted from inside the station.
Photo: AP
The three are scheduled to conduct several other spacewalks during their time on board.
China completed the Tiangong station in November last year with the addition of the third of three modules, centered on the Tianhe living and command module.
China built its own station after it was excluded from the International Space Station (ISS), largely due to US objections over the Chinese space programs’ intimate ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the Chinese Communist Party.
Tiangong weighs about 66 tonnes — a fraction of the 465-tonne ISS. It can accommodate up to six astronauts, although only three will be on board for each mission.
With a lifespan of 10 to 15 years, Tiangong could one day be the only space station still operating if the ISS retires at the end of the decade, as expected.
China in 2003 became the third government to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the former Soviet Union in 1961 and the US in 1962. It conducted its first spacewalk in September 2008, and the tempo of such activities has increased since the launch of the Tianhe module in 2021.
The country has also chalked up uncrewed mission successes. Its Yutu-2 rover was the first to explore the little-known far side of the moon. Its Chang’e 5 probe also returned lunar rocks to Earth in December 2020 for the first time since the 1970s, and another Chinese rover is searching for evidence of life on Mars.
A crewed mission to the moon is also under consideration, although no timeline has been set.
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