China's Shenzhou-18 taikonauts complete second spacewalk

The Shenzhou-18 taikonauts on board China's orbiting space station completed their second spacewalk at 10:51 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Wednesday, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

Ye Guangfu, Li Cong and Li Guangsu worked for about 6.5 hours to complete multiple tasks, with Li Guangsu remaining inside the space station. This marks the 16th extravehicular activity (EVA) by Chinese astronauts during the China Space Station (CSS)'s application and development phase.

Liu Ming, assistant research fellow at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), told China Media Group (CMG) that "the purpose of this EVA is to improve the long-term safe and stable operation of the space station, by installing protective devices on extravehicular equipment, mainly cables and pipelines."

The trio conducted their successful first spacewalk in May, during which they installed protective devices for the extravehicular cables of the Mengtian lab module. Their focus for the second spacewalk was on the Wentian lab module and the Tianhe core module's protective devices for the extravehicular cables and pipelines, Liu added.

With the assistance of the space station's robotic arm and researchers on Earth, they installed space debris protection devices for the pipelines, cables and key equipment outside the CSS, and conducted an extravehicular inspection.

Ye and Li Cong, who undertook the spacewalk, have since returned safely to the Wentian lab module.

The Shenzhou-18 crew is now one-third of the way through their space journey. They have a busy schedule ahead, filled with a large number of in-orbit scientific experiments and technological tests, said the agency.