The astronauts of China's Shenzhou-14 manned space mission recalled the thrilling experience of spacewalks in September last year.
On September 1 and 2, 2022, Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, Chen Dong and Liu Yang completed their first extravehicular activities (EVAs) with the support of taikonaut Cai Xuzhe inside China Space Station's lab module Wentian.
The last task of the first spacewalk was to perform an autonomous emergency return to the Wentian lab module. The designated path was 30 meters long and taikonauts needed to crawl along the handrails on the bulkhead.
"We relied entirely on our hands. We happened to be in the shadow area when crawling the longest path. I dared to take a glance down at halfway. It was all black, bottomless darkness. I don't think 'abyss' is enough to describe the feeling, that you can't see anything or reference. Such a huge psychological blow sent my nerves right through the roof. So I quickly averted my gaze and held the handrail even tighter," Liu said.
After about six hours, the crew members of the Shenzhou-14 successfully completed all the scheduled tasks for the first extravehicular activity. Liu Yang and Chen Dong took a selfie before returning to the cabin.
"They said it was a pretty nice shot. The sun was rising between us, so red and radiant. At that time if you looked down, you could see the vast territory of our mother earth, so blue and beautiful. It was not until that time that I was in the mood and had time to fix my eyes greedily on the spectacular scenery outside the space station. I was really happy," Liu said.
Only 17 days after the first spacewalk, on September 17, 2022, the taikonauts conducted their second EVAs when they installed a handle and had an extravehicular rescue drill.
"Before our second spacewalk, the ground control called, saying that the mission might be ok for the rescuer but requires some guts for the rescued. Because I needed to completely let go and let someone else to pull me away. Indeed when I loosened my grip, I felt I might float away, far away from the space station. It was just the conditioned reflex that made me want to grab something instinctively when I let go. At the time, I thought we must trust our teammates. Although I couldn't grab, I could still look around, help him confirm and talk to each other. When he pulled me during spacewalk, I could remind him of the extravehicular loads and prevent him from bumping into something," Cai said.
The three taikonauts are the first crew to enter the space station's two lab modules, and they set a record of making three spacewalks on a single flight mission.
They also helped realize the world's fastest automated rendezvous and docking of the cargo craft Tianzhou-5 with the space station in about two hours.
The trio conducted an in-orbit rotation with the Shenzhou-15 crew, a historic gathering that added the workforce at the in-orbit space station to six for the first time.