China is one of three powers that are independently capable of carrying out manned space flights. The last launch into orbit of a spacecraft with three cosmonauts of this country took place on June 16. For the first time in the history of China, a woman, Liu Yang, was included in the crew of the Shenzhou-9.
The history of the Chinese astronautics to date has four manned flights. The first of them took place in October 2003 - the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft safely delivered to orbit and returned to earth the first celestial cosmonaut, Yang Liwei. Two years later, a crew of two went into space, and after another three, a crew of three. In mid-June 2012, another spacecraft, Shenzhou-9 (translated as “Sacred Shuttle”), was launched from the Jiuquan Cosmodrome (translated as “Source of Wine”). His crew also consisted of three astronauts, but for the first time there was a woman among them. It is curious that the first woman-cosmonaut of our planet, Valentina Tereshkova, also went into orbit on June 16 in 1963.
Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman among taikonauts ("taikun" - space), is married, she is 33 years old, she has a higher education and the rank of major in the country's air force. Liu Yang spent two years training in the cosmonaut corps, and went into orbit as responsible for conducting biomedical research. The main task of this expedition was a manned docking with the Tiangong-1 (Heavenly Hall) scientific station launched into space at the end of September 2011. The previous spacecraft, the Shenzhou-8, did it automatically, and manual docking is a much more difficult task.
The launch of the first taikonaut was successful, and the commander of its crew, Jing Haipeng, who was the first Chinese to go into space twice, successfully docked the ship with the orbital station. The cosmonauts boarded Tiangong-1 and Liu Yang conducted biomedical experiments for nearly two weeks. During this time, her colleagues carried out undocking and reconnection of the spacecraft with the orbital module. And on June 29, the first Chinese astronaut, along with the rest of the crew, returned safely to Earth - the descent vehicle made a soft landing in North China.
