Shenzhou 7 — first Chinese spacewalk

On the evening of 27 September 2008, during the spacecraft's 29th orbit, China stopped to watch live television. Inside Shenzhou 7's orbital module, Zhai Zhigang, sealed in the Chinese-built Feitian spacesuit, gripped the handle of a hatch that did not want to open. He heaved at it repeatedly; crewmate Liu Boming passed him a metal pry bar. When the hatch finally swung wide, the Earth was rolling past below, and for the first time in history a Chinese astronaut floated out into open space.

The choreography carried symbolism in every detail. Zhai wore Feitian, China's first homemade EVA suit; Liu Boming, standing by half-out of the hatch as his backup, wore a Russian-made Orlan, two nations' spacesuit engineering working side by side. Liu handed out a small Chinese flag, and Zhai waved it at the camera while greeting the country in words broadcast live to the nation. The walk lasted about 22 minutes, with the third crew member, Jing Haipeng, monitoring systems from the re-entry module.

What viewers did not fully grasp at the time was the nerve involved. Just as the spacewalk began, a fire alarm sounded in the orbital module, terrifying for any crew even though fire is essentially impossible in vacuum, and ground control soon confirmed it was false. The crew pressed on without breaking stride; Liu Boming said afterwards that they were determined to complete the spacewalk and fly the flag regardless. After the EVA, the mission released a small companion satellite, BX-1, which photographed Shenzhou 7 sailing over the blue Earth.

The re-entry module landed on the Inner Mongolian grasslands on 28 September after 68 hours and 27 minutes of flight, ending China's first three-person mission. With one short walk, China had become the third country to master extravehicular activity, using its own suit and its own airlock. The techniques proven that day, depressurisation, hatch operations, tether work, became the foundation for building and maintaining the Tiangong space station a decade later.