AsianScientist (Jun. 24, 2013) – On Thursday, female Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping addressed about 330 primary and middle school students in Beijing via a live video feed from the space module Tiangong-1.
Orbiting at 340 km above the Earth, Wang lectured the students about zero gravity in space, and joked that she had not come across any UFOs yet.
As reported by the state-run Xinhua news agency, the students on her class included children from migrant workers’ families, of ethnic minorities, and from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, who gathered at the High School Affiliated to Renmin University for the lecture.
More than 60 million students and teachers at about 80,000 middle schools across the country also watched the CCTV network live broadcast.
Wang and her crew members – crew commander Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang – set off to the space aboard the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft on June 11. The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong space module two days later.
Together with her colleagues, Wang demonstrated how astronauts measure their weight in space and answered questions regarding the recycling of water in the orbiter, space debris, and the view from the orbiter.
“Through the front windows, we can see the Earth and many other stars, but up till now, we haven’t seen any UFOs,” Wang said. “I tell you a wonderful phenomenon: we can see sunrises 16 times a day as we circle the Earth every 90 minutes.”
The 33-year-old Ms. Wang Yaping is the second Chinese female astronaut after Liu Yang, who was part of the crew on the Shenzhou-9 mission last year.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: CCTV.
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