Analysis: China’s new space station gets its first female astronaut
Wang Yaping, 41, is part of a three-member team heading for the Tiangong — or Heavenly Palace — space station, where she is expected to become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk.
China’s aim to complete the station and have it fully crewed by December 2022 is an ambitious target but it appears to be on course. Last month, three other Chinese astronauts successfully completed a three-month stay on board, during which they worked on the station’s core module and conducted two spacewalks to install equipment.
This time, Wang’s team will stay for 183 days — the longest stint in space by Chinese astronauts. She will be accompanied by mission commander Zhai Zhigang, 55, and Ye Guangfu, 41.
Their spacecraft is scheduled to take off from the Gobi Desert in northwest China at 12:23 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday (12:23 p.m. ET Friday), the China Manned Space Program said Thursday.
Preparations for their stay have been long in the making. Last month, a cargo vessel delivered 6 metric tons of food, water, oxygen bottles, spacesuits and other necessities to the station.
It will be Wang’s second space mission. A major in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force and a transport plane pilot, she was recruited as an aspiring astronaut in 2010.
In 2013, she spent 15 days in orbit with the Shenzhou-10 mission. From a trial space station module, she gave a science lecture to 60 million students across China — showing them surface tension of liquids in space, conducting kung fu moves and answering questions.
“When I looked out of the window for the first time, I realized the true meaning of the power of life… that kind of beauty was just beyond comprehension,” she said.
According to Wang, a manned space program without female astronauts would be incomplete.
“It is like a woman’s role in the family. Women have responsibilities. We also make serious missions more lively and pleasant,” she said.
And female crew members bring a practical benefit too, Wang added. “We women astronauts weigh less (than men, and) that’s more economical to the mission.”
Wang is China’s second woman in space, after fellow astronaut Liu Yang. In 2012, Liu made history by joining a three-person crew on the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft — a milestone celebrated by women across China.
Liu’s space mission came 49 years to the day after the Soviet Union put Valentina Tereshkova into space — making her the world’s first female astronaut in outer space.
As Ride prepared for her trip on the Space Shuttle STS-7, NASA engineers famously asked her how many tampons she might need for a week in orbit.
In a terse reply, she suggested they halve that estimate.
Her research found that most female astronauts opt to use contraceptives and put their periods on hold, both in preparation for and during spaceflight.
For missions that last a few weeks, astronauts are able to use oral contraceptives to time their cycles accordingly. But Jain said no research has been done on long-term use of contraceptives in space, for missions that last for months or even years.
Death sentence for livestream murder
A man who set his ex-wife on fire as she livestreamed to her online followers was sentenced to death on Thursday, concluding a murder case that received nationwide notoriety.
The victim, 30-year-old Lhamo, was a farmer and livestreamer in a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in southwestern Sichuan province. She was streaming a video of herself last September when a man burst in, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. She died two weeks later.
The court found his crime “was extremely cruel” and “deserves severe punishment,” CCTV reported.
Tang had a history of physical abuse toward Lhamo, reportedly beating her many times before they divorced in June 2020, according to CCTV. In the following months, he repeatedly sought her out but was turned away — leading to the murder.
The case sparked widespread discussion on the larger problems surrounding women and violence in China, and how the country’s legal system often fails to protect victims.
After the death sentence was handed out, one user on the Chinese social media platform Weibo argued that “vague” terms like domestic violence should be dropped from legal cases because it “obfuscates right from wrong” and undermines the severity of the crime.
“Intentional assault is intentional assault, and homicide is homicide, regardless of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim,” said the user, with the comment gaining more than 24,700 likes.
The topics of domestic violence, abuse and dissatisfaction with the system had already been circulating in public discourse when Lhamo’s murder occurred, adding to the growing outrage.
