China says two of its astronauts spent nine hours outside the Tiangong space station. The longest previous spacewalk by Americans was eight hours and 56 minutes, UNN reports, citing the New York Times .
Details
The astronauts of the Chinese Shenzhou-19 mission, Cai Xuizhe and Song Lindong, have completed their first “off-ship activity” - a spacewalk - surpassing the record set by the Americans in 2001 by eight hours and 56 minutes.
While admiring the amazing views in space, we also felt the weight and grandeur of manned space efforts
The astronauts launched into space in late October as part of a mission to build and maintain China's Tiangong space station. They were accompanied by a third astronaut-engineer, Wang Haose, who remained inside the space station during the spacewalk to assist her colleagues.
According to Chinese media reports, the three astronauts plan to spend six months in orbit of the Tiangong station, conducting experiments and making a series of spacewalks.
Chinese space planners hope that the Tiangong mission will be a step toward sending astronauts to the moon in the coming years.
The agency also reported that two astronauts went outside Tiangong, which is dangerous even with careful preparation, for a serious purpose: to install equipment to protect the station from debris in space and to check other equipment outside.
Interestingly, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, astronauts are taking fruit flies with them to study how reduced magnetism and microgravity affect the behavior and growth of flies.
Recall
Earlier, UNN wrote that in May, three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth after completing a six-month mission aboard the Chinese space station Tiangong.