The Taikonauts remained outside the space station for seven hours, working with a manipulator and a panoramic camera, and also conducted rescue exercises.
Since April of this year, when the base module of the new Chinese space station Tiangong was put into orbit, one cargo and one manned ship with three taikonauts on board have already arrived at it. Since then, they have remained on the station and made a spacewalk on July 4. This is reported by China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). Previously, Chinese cosmonauts carried out such an operation only once, in 2008.
The first to leave the module was the pilot-operator Liu Boming, who was present during the last exit, but then remained at the station. Tang Hongbo, a research assistant, followed him out. The crew commander, Nie Haisheng, remained inside, helping their work, which lasted about seven hours, after which the taikonauts successfully returned to the station. As in 2008, the Taikonauts used the Feitian spacesuits, developed on the basis of the Russian Orlanov-M.
Liu Boming worked with a robotic arm manipulator, installing motion limiters on it, and then "rolled" on it while the manipulator was controlled by Nie Haisheng. Next, Bomin and Hongbo rewired the panoramic camera, which is necessary in order to track what is happening on the outer surface of the station. On Earth, due to the limitations of the size of the launch vehicle, it was mounted just below the desired location, but now it has been moved and covers all the necessary space.
During the return of the Taikonauts, an emergency evacuation exercise was held on board the base module. To do this, Tang Hongbo moved to the most remote part of the module and, at Haisheng's command, reached the airlock as soon as possible. Before the completion of the flight of the Shenzhou-12 expedition(Shenzhou-12), which is scheduled for September, the taikonauts should conduct another spacewalk.
