A Long March 2F rocket blasted off on Tuesday evening from the Jiaquan launch centrein China with the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft, carrying for the first time a teacher-in-space : 33-year-old Wang Yaping.
Wang will conduct physics classes from space in a zero-gravity environment for elementary and middle school students. She will be the second Chinese spacewoman , the first one being Liu Wang, who flew on Shenzhou-9 in 2012. Wang's flight comes at a time when the world is preparing to observe on June 16 the 50th anniversary of the cosmic trip of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.
Wang's other two crew mates are Nie Haisheng, commander of the 15-day Shenzhou-10 mission, and Zhang Xiaoguang, who will recordWang's lectures and also assist Nie during the manual docking with the Tiangong-1 orbiting module. Twelve minutes after the launch, the spacecraft's solar panels opened and a minute later it entered the designated orbit. It is China's fifth manned space mission and is part of moves to eventually put a permanently manned station above the earth.
An hour into the mission, former Isro chairman U R Rao told TOI from Bangalore that the ultimate aim of these manned spaceflights by China is to put a man on the moon around 2020. "They could perhaps even do it earlier," Rao said.
Shenzhou 10's mission is also to improve docking technologies and it will fly at a velocity of 28,440 kmph, taking 90 minutes to make one orbit. The flight has three firsts —it is the longest mission lasting 15 days; there will be an absence of what is known as "night-time surveillance" and the three crew members will have individually-designed menus: and classes will be conducted from space for Chinese school students to inspire them to take a future career in space.
