CHINA''S third manned spacecraft lifted off at 9:10 pm last Thursday to fulfill (完成) its most ambitious and risky mission (任务): spacewalk.
Shenzhou VII, carrying three 42-year-old astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, blasted off (发射) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, into the sky. By last Friday, the astronauts said they felt "physically sound (健康的)", to the joy of the scientists on the ground.
In the spaceship, they had a wide choice of dishes: nearly 80. They also took traditional Chinese medicine, made with more than 10 herbs (药草), to treat space motion (运动) sickness.
The astronauts orbited (绕轨道运行) the earth for three days. In a special spacesuit, which weighs 120 kilograms and cost about 30 million yuan, Zhai Zhigang was scheduled to walk in space about 343 kilometers above the earth on September 27.
That made China the third country to conduct extra-vehicular (舱外的) activities in space. The other two to have achieved that are the former Soviet Union and the US.
The extra-vehicular activities are essential for China''s long-term goal of building a space station by 2020, and possibly launching a manned mission to the moon.
"At the Beijing Olympics, China proved it was the best in the world at coming in first. Now the country will show it can also be very happy with bronze (铜牌). Forty-three years after Russian Alexei Leonov spent 12 minutes outside an orbiting spacecraft, China plans to become the third nation after the Soviet Union and the US to carry out its own spacewalk. The feat (壮举) would be both a technological and public relations triumph (胜利)," wrote Time Magazine in the US.
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Key events
October 15, 2003:
Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, 43, orbits the Earth during a 21-hour flight aboard Shenzhou V.
October 12, 2005:
Shenzhou VI completes a 5-day orbit around the Earth carrying astronauts Fei Junlong, 44, and Nie Haisheng, 44.
September 25, 2008:
China launches Shenzhou VII, carrying three 42-year-old astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng. Zhai Zhigang becomes China''s first man to walk in space.
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