Zhai Zhigang

Zhai Zhigang was born on 11 October 1966 in Longjiang County, in the Qiqihar region of Heilongjiang province, into a poor rural family. His mother, unable to read, sold roasted sunflower seeds to help pay for her children's schooling, a hardship Zhai would later credit with driving his ambition. He joined the People's Liberation Army and won a place at an air force aviation institute, becoming a fighter pilot who logged more than 1,000 hours in the air and rose to the rank of colonel and squadron leader. In 1998, alongside Yang Liwei and the rest of China's first taikonaut group, he was selected from more than 1,500 candidates and began the long wait and preparation for a mission of his own.

That mission came on 25 September 2008, when Zhai launched as commander of Shenzhou 7 from Jiuquan, joined by crewmates Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng. Two days later, wearing a Chinese-developed Feitian spacesuit, he opened the hatch and floated outside the spacecraft to perform China's first spacewalk. During the roughly 20-minute excursion he waved a small Chinese flag and radioed back that he had exited the hatch and was feeling good, a moment broadcast to the nation and one that made China only the third country to conduct an independent spacewalk. Thirteen years later Zhai returned to orbit, again as commander, on Shenzhou 13, launched on 15 October 2021. This time the destination was China's own Tiangong space station, and the crew, which included Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, remained aloft for about six months, until April 2022, in what was then the longest Chinese crewed mission. During the expedition Zhai conducted two more spacewalks, bringing his career EVA total to three, and helped commission the new station for permanent occupation. His two flights amount to well over 4,600 hours in space.

Zhai holds a permanent place in the history of Chinese spaceflight as the country's first spacewalker, the taikonaut who first demonstrated that China could work in the vacuum outside a spacecraft. Decorated with the title Spaceflight Hero and other state honors, and inspired in his youth by Yuri Gagarin, he has become a mentor to younger taikonauts and a leading public advocate for China's crewed program. He remains an active astronaut, his career now spanning the gap between China's earliest human missions and the operational era of its own space station.