On Saturday (September 17), Chinese astronauts Cai Xuzhe and Chen Dong performed a spacewalk from Tiangong, a new station set to be completed by the end of the year.
Tiangong: China is constructing its own space station after being denied access to the ISS
The astronauts installed a foot-stop to secure an astronaut’s feet to a robotic arm, a handle to open the hatch door from the outside in an emergency, and pumps at the station lab module Wentian, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency.
Because China’s military controls the country’s space program, Beijing is constructing its own space station after being denied access to the International Space Station by the United States.
In an echo of the US-Soviet rivalry that sparked the race to the moon in the 1960s, American officials see China’s space ambitions as posing a slew of strategic challenges.
During a six-month mission to oversee the completion of the Tiangong space station, the astronauts will ensure that it resembles the Soviet Mir station, which orbited Earth from the 1980s until 2001.
Tiangong’s core module, which is expected to operate for at least a decade, entered orbit early last year following the return of the last one to Earth in April after 183 days on the space station.
According to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), the country’s heavily promoted space program has already resulted in the landing of a rover on Mars and the sending of probes to the Moon