China to send its first woman on the space mission

China is supposed to send its first woman into space at the end of June, 2012. Currently, the names of two smart woman pilots have been short-listed.

One of them will join the three-person team, which will go on the space mission. According to a Chinese news agency, the highly sophisticated Shenzhou-9 spacecraft will be used to take three Chinese into the space.

There is a tough competition between the two ladies, Major Liu Yang and Captain Wang Yaping, for the space mission.

Major Liu Yang is regarded as “hero pilot” in China. She achieved a successful emergency landing after a dramatic birdstrike incident spattered the windshield of her plane with blood. Likewise, Captain Wang Yaping is equally talented and smart.

She is believed to have flown rescue missions during the Sichuan earthquake and piloted a cloud-seeding plane to help clear the skies of rain for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

“They are selected as members of the first batch of female astronauts in China because of their excellent flight skills and psychological quality,” said Xinhua.

This month’s mission is regarded as an important stage in China’s ambitious space programme. “The Shenzhou-9 will perform our country’s first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module,” Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the
manned space program, told state media.

“It means China’s spacecraft will become a genuine manned shuttle tool between space and Earth. It can send human beings to space stations or space labs. This will be a significant step in China’s manned space flight history.”

If everything will go according to the plan, then China will become the eighth country to see one of its female citizens go into space, and only the third to put one there itself.

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Posted by Irfan Khokhar on Jun 13 2012. Filed under Latest News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry