Early on Sunday morning, two Chinese astronauts completed their work outside their country’s Tiangong space station. The event was the second spacewalk in Chinese history. At the same time, with this mission, astronauts performed tandem off-board activity (EVA) for the first time.
Shenzhou-12 astronaut Boming Liu left the station at 20:11 ET on July 3, and was later joined by teammate Hongbo Tang. Meanwhile, the mission’s commander, Haisheng Nie, also stayed inside the Tianhe “Heavens Harmony” crew module to support them.
Astronauts Worked 380 Kilometers Above Earth
The two astronauts went out to work on the module’s robotic arm while wearing China’s next-generation Feitian EVA suits. The astronauts stayed 380 kilometers above the earth’s surface the entire time. The components they install will aid future missions as China tries to complete its new space station in 2022. Liu and Tang returned to Tianhe at approximately 02:57 ET and conducted the entire spacewalk at around seven hours.
China’s Manned Space Agency said in a statement about the mission, “The safe return of astronauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo to the Tianhe core module marks the full success of our country’s first spacewalk in space station construction.”
In 2008, Zhigang Zhai last put China in the history books as the third country to complete a spacewalk. Last year, the country successfully landed its first rover on Mars and took rock and soil samples from the Moon. The Shenzhou-12 crew is planning a second spacewalk before returning to Earth this year, the country’s space agency said.
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