An experience that is out of this world

Country's first female astronaut gets students to reach for the stars at a space culture project launch, Mei Jia reports.

Space brings out the child in all of us. Gazing at the stars can unleash the most profound emotions. The sense of wonder is magnified when we look at our planet, our fragile home from space. Few have traveled beyond the planet's environs but all admit that the first glimpse of Earth from space is a deeply emotional experience.

Liu Yang, China's first woman in space, is no exception. She remembers exactly what she said when she first saw the blue orb quietly glowing in the vastness of space.

"Look! The Earth really is a sphere," she blurted out to her fellow astronauts. She was recalling her experience to a rapt audience of students at a primary and middle school in Beijing Space City where the China Academy of Space Technology is also located.

Thousands more students at four other schools in Tianjin municipality and Hebei province listened to her speech through a livestreaming platform at the event to launch the Knowledge Popularization Project on Nov 12. The event was co-organized by the "Our Space" Media Convergence Center at Beijing Space City and the Juvenile Space Administration in a bid to popularize space among young people.

"I used to have space fantasies as a child," the Shenzhou IX astronaut, who spent 13 days in space in 2012, says to the students.

"Remain curious.

"I'm lucky I was born and live in a great time and great country which enabled me to realize my dream,"' she tells the students, implying that the students could one day realize their space dream too.

The young audience relished her vivid stories about life in the spacecraft, including eating "ice cream", doing tai chi and mastering space kung fu. And after her speech, these students, and those who watched the livestream lecture, ran to their respective school's sports grounds to do an experiment simulating a rocket launch with their models.

To Qi Miao, initiator of the Juvenile Space Administration space culture popularization project, activities like these have proven incredibly popular.

Qi's team has held lectures on space and held simulated rocket launches with students from 14 cities and towns in six provinces since 2018. And with the help of the livestreaming platform, they reached students at 48 more schools in remote and less affluent areas.

They have also created audio programs, cartoons and books to promote space knowledge among young people.

Qi believes the incredible success of China's space exploration program in recent years will inspire the younger generations.

According to Liu, the country achieved a breakthrough in manned space technology in 2003, undertook its first spacewalk in 2008, and is set to build a manned space station by 2020.

On top of this, a Mars mission is expected to be launched in 2020. A key experiment for that mission aimed at verifying the design and capability of a robotic lander was carried out in Hebei province on Nov 14.

Wang Xin'ge, head of the "Our Space" Media Convergence Center, says the Knowledge Popularization Project is meant to establish platforms to help interested young students nationwide explore the mysteries of space.

"The project will be a window to introduce the country's space program, as well as to promote the spirit and culture of space," Wang says. "We aim to help ignite curiosity, and help the younger generation to soar into the future."

The project will see 1,000 lectures delivered in schools in the coming three years, 100 campus "space stations" being built and an online space museum created for young people. More space festivals and space knowledge contests in schools are to be added to this list. And schools in cities and rural areas will be also included in the project, says Luo Xiao from the He Run Foundation, one of the project organizers.