China astronaut to walk in space

Three Chinese astronauts orbiting the Earth are about to take part in their country's first space walk.
One astronaut will leave the vessel for 20 minutes to conduct experiments while a second will don a spacesuit but remain in the spacecraft as back-up.
The operation will be broadcast live on television across China.
Conducting operations outside a spacecraft is essential if China is to fulfil its goal of building an orbiting station in the next few years.
The 42-year-old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang is due to carry out the manoeuvre at 1630 Beijing Time (0830 GMT) on Saturday.
The Shenzhou VII capsule soared into orbit on a Long March II-F rocket from Jiuquan spaceport in north-west China.
The rocket put the Shenzhou capsule in a near-circular orbit more than 300km above the Earth.

Mr Zhai is joined on the mission by two other "yuhangyuan" (astronauts) - Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng.
The astronauts have been training in a water tank
Zhang Jianqi, one of the chief engineers for China's space programme, said keeping three men in the spacecraft, and then sending one outside, would be a "big test".
"This is a big technological leap," he told state-run news agency Xinhua.
"The risks are quite high. Sending up three astronauts is a jump both in quantity and quality." When Mr Zhai carries out his excursion, he is expected to wear a Chinese-made spacesuit thought to have cost between £5m and £20m ($10m-$40m)

The passion of china's first space walk




China's technology has developed rapidly over the past decades. Especially in space. firstly, the equipment of space exploration was merely for working in space capsule, but now the astronauts are able to walk in space or maybe can land on mars in the future. The progress is very amazing.

Secondly, I think it would be a good news to our people as our nation is rising. Why do I say that? Every strong nation has her own space equipment such as satellite, space ship.

They did it because of the trend of space exploration as well as the shortage of energy resource.

But there are a few countries to do so as it requires lots of money to develop and to maintain.

On the other hand, china has the ability to develop what I mentioned, which means china is a strong country, not only in economy but also in science.