Maintenance Work Carried Out on China's Tiangong Space Station
Chinese astronauts succeeded in a spacewalk lasting about 9 hours, breaking the world record for the longest spacewalk.
On the 18th (local time), according to Hong Kong media South China Morning Post (SCMP), the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced that astronauts Cai Xuzhe and Su Lingdong each completed a 9-hour spacewalk at the Tiangong space station and successfully returned.
These astronauts left Earth aboard Shenzhou 19 on October 30 and docked with Tiangong. They are currently carrying out various missions at Tiangong, including space life sciences and protein crystal structure analysis. Their return to Earth is scheduled for between April and early May next year.
Cai Xuzhe had already succeeded in a spacewalk two years ago, and Su Lingdong is the first astronaut born in the 1990s to conduct a spacewalk. The two also installed protective equipment and performed maintenance work outside Tiangong.
Their spacewalk broke not only China’s own longest record but also the world’s longest record. China began spacewalks with Shenzhou 7 in September 2008. The first spacewalk lasted only 20 minutes, but on May 28 this year, Shenzhou 18 astronauts stayed outside Tiangong for about 8 hours and 30 minutes, showing significant progress.
The previous world record for the longest spacewalk was held by American Discovery astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001. They successfully floated in space for 8 hours and 56 minutes. At that time, they went outside while performing a relocation of the docking port installed outside the International Space Station (ISS) Alpha.
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