September 27 – First Chinese Spacewalk!

September 27, 2020

Posted on September 27, 2020

The thing about human space exploration is that the early history of humans blasting into outer space was dominated by the USSR and USA. Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts kept one-upping each other, with the Soviets taking most of the early leads (first man in orbit, first woman in space, etc.) and the US being the first and so far only nation to land astronauts on the Moon.

But of course the early history of space flight isn’t the only history! Astronauts from at least 37 nations have traveled to space. They come from nations ranging from the Middle East to Eastern Asia, from Europe to Africa, from North America to South America. (I didn’t spot any astronauts from Australia or other nations in “Oceania.”)

On this date in 2008, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang became the first from his nation to do a spacewalk completely outside the spacecraft. He was wearing a space suit developed by his own nation (some Chinese astronauts have worn Russian-derived space suits).