Two of China ’s taikonauts aboard its Tiangong Space Station have carried out the first of the two spacewalks contrive for thethree - calendar month crew missionin orbit to get the space station up and go .
As operations on board the Tiangong space station continue to go ahead , taikonauts ( the Taiwanese name for astronauts ) Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo go out of the air lock on July 4 , assisted from inside the Tianhe module by commander Nie Haisheng . Theseven hours of extravehicular activity(EVA ) work had the two space travelers work on the exterior dowery of the infinite place .
In a telecasting of Liu go out the cabin , he said : " Wow , it ’s too beautiful out here,“reports AFP .
Liu and Tang finished instal groundwork restraint and the extravehicular working platform on the place ’s 5 - meter - long ( 50 substructure ) robotic arm . They stop elevate the bird’s-eye camera outside the Tinahe core and installed other instruments and equipment .
Currently , Tiangong ( which means Heavenly Palace ) lie in of the master Tianhe ( River in the Heavens , also a nickname for the Milky Way ) core module but when completed it will be about one - fifth of masses of theInternational Space Station(ISS ) and will orbit at a similar altitude of between 340 and 450 km ( 210 and 280 miles ) . The ISS is kept at around 420 kilometers ( 260 miles ) in low - Earth ambit .
The enxt match of years will see the Chinese quad station grow a lot with 11 launches planned , including itstwo lab experiment moduleslaunching next year . The first one will be Wentian ( intend Quest for Heavens ) , which is expected to set up around May - June 2022 , followed about three month later by Mengtian ( meaning Dreaming of Heavens ) . A disjoined telescope module will also be found over the next several days .
This is China ’s first crewed missionary work in almost five years . This crew of taikonauts is expected back on Earth in September with the next crowd expected to fly there in October , and the follow work party launch in tardy spring and tardy descent of 2022 .
