Wang Yaping made history Sunday night as she became the first Chinese astronaut to take a spacewalk with a colleague outside China’s new Tiangong space station under construction.
The two astronauts on the three-member Shenzhou-13 crew, which is moored at the Tiangong station under construction, successfully completed a 6.5-hour spacewalk, according to CNN and Space.com. This is the first time Chinese astronauts have left their boat since October 16, when they arrived at the station.
Wang is the second Chinese woman in space, after Liu Yang, the first woman to participate in the Shenzhou-9 mission in 2012. Wang was in space for the first time in 2013 with the Shenzhou-10 mission, but then did not takes a space walk.
In all, only 15 women – most of them NASA Americans – have “walked” in space since Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya made her debut in 1984. 7 in 2008, who is currently the commander of Shenzhou-13 and the one who accompanied Wang on her first spacewalk.
The Shenzhou-13 crew will perform two more space walks during their six-month stay at the Chinese station, longer than any previous Chinese manned mission. The station is expected to be fully manned and operational by December 2022.
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