Three astronauts gave China’s first physics lesson from space in a live broadcast from the Tiangong-1 orbital capsule some 340 kilometres above Earth on Thursday.
Wang Yaping, China’s second woman in space, led the one-hour lesson, which was broadcast live on national television and to several hundred schoolchildren in a Beijing theatre.
Wang, 33, demonstrated gravity, pendulum movement, gyroscopic motion and the surface tension of water in space.
She was aided by her two crew members on the Shenzhou-10 mission, Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang.
Nie, the mission commander, floated in the capsule in a crossed-legged lotus position, a move usually only seen in films featuring levitating martial arts masters.
“Thanks to the weightless conditions, we are all masters,” Wang joked.
Launched on June 11 on a 15-day mission, the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft docked with Tiangong-1 on June 13 to form a small space laboratory.
Shenzhou-10 is China’s fifth and longest scheduled manned space mission. It marks a key step toward China’s goal of assembling a permanent space station by 2020.
In 2003, China became the third nation to launch an astronaut into space, after Russia and the United States.
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Published on June 20, 2013
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