Two Chinese astronauts simply secured a spot in spaceflight historical past.
Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong, a part of China’s three-person Shenzhou 19 mission, spent greater than 9 hours spacewalking exterior the Tiangong house station from late Monday night time (Dec. 16) by means of Tuesday morning (Dec. 17), based on officers with China’s Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO).
That broke the earlier length document for a single extravehicular exercise (EVA), which was eight hours and 56 minutes, based on NASA. That mark was set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms exterior the International Space Station again in March 2001.
This week’s EVA was the primary for the Shenzhou 19 mission, which arrived at Tiangong on Oct. 29 for a six-month keep.
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During the spacewalk, Cai and Song — together with crewmate Wang Haoze, who remained inside Tiangong — “labored carefully collectively, and with the assist of the house station’s robotic arm and floor scientific researchers, accomplished the set up of the house station’s house particles safety system, the inspection and disposal of extravehicular gear and amenities, and different duties,” CMSEO officers mentioned in a WeChat replace on Tuesday.
“The extravehicular actions had been an entire success,” they added, additionally noting that Song, 34, “grew to become China’s first astronaut born within the Nineteen Nineties to conduct extravehicular actions.”
According to SpaceInformation, the spacewalk started on Monday at 11:51 p.m. EDT (0451 GMT on Dec. 17), when Cai, the Shenzhou 19 commander, exited Tiangong’s Wentian module. Song adopted swimsuit greater than 90 minutes later, at 1:32 a.m. EDT (0632 GMT).
Both astronauts went again inside Wentian at 8:57 a.m. EDT (1357 GMT) on Tuesday, CMSEO officers wrote within the replace. Those numbers put the EVA’s length at 9 hours and 6 minutes, which means it broke the outdated document by simply 10 minutes.
The record-setting EVA was the seventeenth total exterior of Tiangong, based on SpaceInformation. The house station’s core module, known as Tianhe, reached orbit in April 2021. Two extra modules — Wentian and Mengtian — arrived in July 2022 and November 2022, respectively, finishing the T-shaped orbital outpost.
