Every child dreams of traveling to space or do you just don’t remember watching movies like E.T. and ask you what is beyond the sky? For this reason, whenever the story of an astronaut is known, we cannot help but get excited.
Wang Yaping fulfilled her dream by becoming the first female Taikonaut, a term used to refer to Chinese astronauts, who will be at China’s Tiangong (Celestial Palace) space station.
Meet Wang Yaping
Wang Yaping, a former captain of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Forces, was born in 1980 in a village on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Shandong Province to a family of farmers. Since she was a child, she was interested in sports, but her career as an athlete was cut short due to her short stature. However, she couldn’t imagine that these obstacles were forging a much brighter path for her.
In 1997, her high school classmates encouraged her to apply to the pilot recruitment program, as “she was good at sports and didn’t wear glasses.” At the time and just 17 years old, Wang, encouraged by her parents, was considering applying to a university. Due to her physical strength and ability to stay calm under pressure, Wang succeeded in all tests and joined the seventh group of female drivers in China.
In May 2010, after going through a selection process, she became a member of the second group of taikonauts, of which five were men and two were women, she and Liu Yang, who became the first Chinese woman in the world. space in June 2012.
In 2013, Wang finally fulfilled his dream when he was part of the Shenzou-10 mission, which lasted 15 days. During this mission, Wang gave the first live physics lesson from space, which was broadcast to more than 60 million primary and secondary school students in China. These lessons skyrocketed Wang’s popularity and he is expected to continue them on the Tiangong space station.
Space mission!
On October 16, the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft took off bound for the Tiangong space station, which is still under construction and where three taikonauts (Wang herself, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu) will reside for six months. The station is expected to be operational in 2022.
Wang Yaping is only the second female taikonaut in the history of China’s space program and she takes her role as a role model very seriously, as her main admirer is her little five-year-old daughter, who asked her to ‘collect stars for she.’
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