Thread: Chinese Female Astronaut for Shenzhou 9

With the growing possibility of the Shenzhou 9 launching to space atop a Long March 2F booster from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center next month, the Chinese space officials will definitely launch a female military air force pilot-turned-taikonaut to orbit.

Commander in Chief Liu Yu of the Chinese Academy of Launch Technology, disclosed it will be one of two female taikonauts - either Major Wang Yaping, 32, from Yantai, Shandong Province, or Major Liu Yang, 33, from Zhengzhou, Henan Province will be aboard the next Shenzhou flight to become China's first female taikonaut.

Both women are married, and are career pilots in the People's Liberation Army, which they both joined direct from high school, in 1997. They were drafted for spaceflight training, in early 2010, from a pool of just 15 potential female candidates. It is likely that both women will fly to space with the first on Shenzhou 9 and the second on Shenzhou 10 later this year.

Shenzhou 9 is scheduled to rendezvous, and complete a manual docking, with the orbiting Tiangong 1 module, and will stay in orbit for 13 days. It will be China's most complex, and longest, spaceflight, more than doubling their current endurance record as the Chinese government seeks to build a permanent space station and place taikonauts on the surface of the Moon next decade.

Quelle :

Spaceports: Female Taikonaut Certain for Shenzhou 9