Three Chinese astronauts Wang Yaping, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu gave a space lecture on Dec. 9th, 2021
"Hello, everyone! Welcome to Tiangong Class. " With this greeting, a special lecture began on Tiangong space station about 400 kilometers above Earth on Dec. 9th, 2021.
Lasting for about an hour, the space lecture was broadcast live to millions of students. Three astronauts from the Shenzhou XIII crew hosted the lecture, introducing how they live and work on the space station and doing some interesting experiments that can only be done in space.
This is the second live space lecture in China. In 2013, with the assistance of two other Shenzhou X crew members, Wang hosted the country's first live space lecture to over 60 million schoolchildren across China.
More space to teach
Compared with the class eight years ago, this year's space lecture is greatly different. The "classroom" is bigger. Instead of Tiangong I experimental module(实验舱), this year Wang had the space lecture in the Tianhe space core module(核心舱), which is the biggest spacecraft developed by China.
Technological development
The quality of space to ground communication is also much improved.
The space lecture eight years ago sometimes faced the challenges of the video freezing and an unclear picture, but this year's lecture is different.
With the help of China's Tianlian sallies, the transmission(传输) speed has been highly increased and the whole live broadcast has run smoothly. These changes show that Chinese aerospace industry has made great progress in the past eight years.
More courses
Along with the technological progress, this year's space lecture discussed more areas in science. Eight years ago, students could watch the interesting phenomenon of weightlessness in space on TV. But this year, biology was added.
Though these space lectures showed various topics, the aim behind the lectures has never changed. The space lectures aim to "spread knowledge about manned spaceflights and light up the interests for science among young people". The spirit of science in the youth is an important driver of the progress of mankind. The space lecture makes young Chinese people take pride in our country as they see the rapid development of our space technology.