Wang Yaping

Wang Yaping was born in January 1980 in the countryside near Yantai, in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. She joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in 1997 and became a transport pilot, flying Y-7 and Y-8 aircraft on assignments that ranged from combat-readiness exercises to relief flights after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and cloud-seeding operations to influence the weather over the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In May 2010 she was chosen for the second group of Chinese taikonauts, becoming the second woman selected to the corps, and set her sights on following Liu Yang, whom she counted among her inspirations, into orbit.

Wang first flew on Shenzhou 10, launched on 11 June 2013 for a roughly fifteen-day mission that docked with the Tiangong-1 space laboratory. There she became the second Chinese woman in space and delivered China's first live televised science lecture from orbit, demonstrating the physics of weightlessness with a spinning gyroscope, a pendulum, and a floating ball of water to an audience of more than 60 million students and teachers on the ground. Eight years later she returned aboard Shenzhou 13, launched on 15 October 2021 under commander Zhai Zhigang, for a six-month stay on the newly built Tiangong space station that ran until April 2022. On 7 November 2021 she stepped outside the station to become the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk, and by the end of the flight she had also become the first Chinese woman to spend more than 100 days in space. Her two missions, one EVA, and roughly 4,600 hours aloft made her one of the most experienced women in China's program. She had promised her young daughter she would bring back stars, and carried a keepsake from her among her personal effects.

Wang's dual firsts, as the first Chinese woman to walk in space and a two-time flier, secured her a landmark role in her country's spaceflight history, but her broader legacy lies in education and outreach. Her orbital classroom lessons, watched by tens of millions of schoolchildren, made her one of the most recognizable ambassadors for Chinese science, and she has spoken directly to the idea that space sets no lower bar for women. Honored as a Spaceflight Hero and with other state awards, she remains an active taikonaut devoted to encouraging girls to pursue science and aerospace careers and to inspiring the next generation of Chinese explorers.