Shenzhou 7 to let a Chinese astronaut to spacewalk

Shenzhou 7 to let a Chinese astronaut to spacewalk

The Chinese state media has announced that their next spacecraft Shenzhou 7 would take three astronauts for a five-day travel in space.

Even more impressive is the fact that one of the three astronauts would get to conduct the nation’s first spacewalk mission in 2008.

Qi Faren, chief designer of China’s first five Shenzhou spacecrafts said in a statement that the spacewalk mission is just for adaptation, rather than scientific research or aircraft maintenance.

Huang Chunping, chief consultant for China’s manned launching vehicle system added: “The main reason for the delay is that we wanted to be able to carry out the space walk completely dependent on our self-ability.”

The country is only the third country after former Soviet Union and the US, to independently launch astronauts into space.