Out of this world: First Chinese man walks in space

Astronaut Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese man to walk in space today, clambering out of China's Shenzhou VII space craft and waving to the camera.

'I'm feeling quite well. I greet the Chinese people and the people of the world,' Zhai said as he climbed out of the craft, his historic achievement carried live on state television.

Zhai, the 41-year-old son of a snack-seller chosen for the first 'extra-vehicular activity,' unveiled a small Chinese flag, helped by colleague Liu Boming, who also briefly popped his head out of the capsule.

The third crew member, Jing Haipeng, monitored the ship from inside the re-entry module.

Zhai safely returned inside the craft after about 13 minutes. The walk marked the highpoint of China's third manned space journey, which has received blanket media coverage.

Top Communist Party officials including President Hu Jintao watched the spacewalk from a Beijing command centre, breaking into applause with the successful completion of each stage of the manoeuvre.

'Your success represents a new breakthrough in our manned space programme,' Hu told the astronauts in a scripted exchange that was also broadcast live.


Zhai wore a £2m Chinese-made suit made up of ten layers and weighing 120kg. It took the three astronauts or 'taikonauts' 15 hours to piece together.Liu wore a Russian-made one and acted as a back-up.

The risky manoeuvre is a step towards China's longer-term goal of assembling a space lab and then a larger space station.

The fast-growing Asian power wants to be sure of a say in how space and its potential resources are used.

China's Communist Party leaders are celebrating the latest space mission, hailing the country's achievements in a year in which Beijing has staged a successful Olympics and coped with a devastating earthquake in Sichuan.

'On this flight, Chinese people's footprints will be left in space for the first time,' state media Xinhua news said.

'This will give the world yet something else to marvel about China in this extraordinary year of 2008.'


Zhai embarked on his walk after receiving a clean bill of health from doctors on the ground at mission control, Xinhua said.

China's first manned spaceflight was in 2003. A second, two-manned flight followed in 2005. The only other countries that have sent people into space are Russia and the United States.

Shenzhou VII took off on Thursday and is due to land on the northern steppes of Inner Mongolia on Sunday.

While out in space, Zhai will make tests and launch a football-sized 'companion satellite' to monitor the walk and broadcast it back to Earth, where hundreds of millions of Chinese are likely to be glued to their televisions.

Amazing dunes reveal climate change on Mars

Spectacular detailed images of Mars have revealed how climate change shaped the Red Planet over millions of years.

More than 1,000 observations taken by the high resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed details on the surface as small as a desk.

A number of dramatic icy dunes are thought to reflect how the Martian climate changed over time.

One picture shows layered deposits in the north polar region, which have formed a layered stack of dusty ice up to two miles thick. The layer exposed on the cliff face shows not just dusty ice but sand as well, suggesting each layer was a dune field that was only later covered by ice as the temperature cooled.

The colours seen in the images are not the natural colours seen with normal human vision, but are important to distinguish ice, frost, dust and rock on the Martian surface.

The 1,005 Mars observations made between April 26 and July 21st are the latest to be released by scientists working on the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. The camera has revealed the highest resolution images of a planet's surface ever seen from an orbiter.

'Scientists all over the world are already using these images to understand many previously-unexplained phenomena on the Red Planet. We might also discover brand new types of features never seen before,' a spokesman said.

The data forms part of NASA's mission archive, called the Planetary Data System.

The orbiter is being used to identify minerals and individual rock outcrops - information needed to choose future Mars landing sites.

Alfred McEwen, HiRISE principal investigator, is involved in selecting the best possible landing site for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory that is slated to launch in 2009.

He said recent evidence from both U.S. and European Mars orbiters shows clays that contain iron, magnesium and aluminium are widespread throughout ancient Mars bedrock.

'That's a shocking discovery,' he said.

'The actual environments and processes that deposited and altered these clay minerals is poorly understood. But these places have very quickly become where we have to go with future rovers and sample-return missions.'

Scientists hope studies of Mars will reveal more about how the Earth was formed. They believe life in our solar system formed during or even before the Late Heavy Bombardment of 3.9 billion years ago, when large impact craters were formed on the Moon and the surrounding planets.

'We know that Mars underwent heavy bombardment and that it was water-ice rich,' McEwen said.

'The rock record from this time is much better preserved on Mars than it is on Earth.'

HiRISE images show that part of Mars' hardened, ancient crust is exposed on the planet's surface as 'megabreccia,' a collection of large, chaotic rock fragments that formed from energetic events, mostly large impacts on ancient Mars.Three potential sites for the new Mars Science Laboratory are within rover reach of the deposits.