Chinese astronauts step out of spacecraft (2)

Chinese astronauts Major General Liu Boming and Senior Colonel Tang Hongbo are seen doing extravehicular activities (EVAs) out of the space station core module Tianhe on Sunday morning. [Photo/Xinhua]

The spacewalk finished at 2:57 pm, when the two astronauts closed the hatch after Liu returned into the module.

During the spacewalk, Major General Nie Haisheng, the mission commander, remained inside the module to instruct his peers on their tasks and monitor related equipment.

The entire operation was tracked and guided by the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in northwestern Beijing.

Through the spacewalk, the astronauts verified the reliability and capability of hardware involved in extravehicular operation, demonstrated their adaptability and ability to work with the robotic arm, and examined the performance of their spacesuits. The operation laid a crucial foundation for subsequent spacewalks, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

As of Sunday afternoon, the three-member crew had flown with Tianhe－the first and central component of the Chinese space station, called Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace－for more than 17 days. They are scheduled to remain in space until mid-September, when they will return to Earth.

Their spaceship was launched on a Long March 2F carrier rocket that blasted off on June 17 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The astronauts entered Tianhe later that day after the spacecraft docked with the module, becoming Tianhe's first inhabitants.

The Shenzhou XII mission, China's seventh manned spaceflight, is part of the Tiangong program, which aims to complete a three-component space station in a low-Earth orbit before the end of 2022.