Two Chinese astronauts set a world record this week by completing a spacewalk lasting more than nine hours, according to the China Manned Space Agency. The achievement highlights Beijing’s rapid advancements in space exploration.
Astronauts Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong conducted the historic walk on December 17 outside the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit. Their spacewalk exceeded the previous record, set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, by at least four minutes.
Wearing Feitian spacesuits, the astronauts undertook several tasks, including installing space-debris protection devices on the station’s exterior. “They successfully completed all planned tasks and felt very excited about it,” said Wu Hao of the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre during a report on state broadcaster CCTV.
The first-ever spacewalk was conducted by the Soviet Union in 1965, with subsequent missions carried out by Russia and the United States, mainly outside the International Space Station. China joined this list with its first spacewalk in 2008.
The record-breaking spacewalk is just one of several achievements positioning Beijing as a significant player in global space exploration. In recent years, China landed its first Mars rover in 2021, and earlier in 2024, it became the first country to retrieve rock samples from the Moon’s far side during its Chang’e-6 mission.
Looking ahead, China is targeting a Moon landing with astronauts by 2030 and has been courting nations to join its International Lunar Research Station programme, which aims to establish a Moon base on the South Pole. This initiative stands as a rival to NASA’s Artemis programme, which seeks to return US astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972.