Profile: China's youngest astronaut Wu Fei pledges "all-out efforts" on upcoming space mission

JIUQUAN, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Appearing at his first press conference on Thursday, 32-year-old Wu Fei is the youngest Chinese astronaut set to join the Shenzhou-21 mission as a space engineer.

The Shenzhou-21 crew -- Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang -- is scheduled for launch at 11:44 p.m. Friday (Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.

Wu, who previously worked as a spacecraft development engineer, said he is excited that he will soon enter the space station, for which he played a part in testing and development.

Wu was born in 1993 in Baotou, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In 2010, he was admitted to Beihang University in Beijing, where he majored in aircraft design.

After completing his master's degree, he became an engineer at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. There, his work focused on thermal testing for spacecraft.

In specialized labs that simulated the vacuum and extreme-temperature environments of space, he and his colleagues tested whether the thermal control systems of the spacecraft could properly regulate temperatures.

"I was like a doctor giving health examinations," he said, "checking if the spacecraft materials had cracked or warped from the extreme temperature swings, and making sure everything would work right up in space."

In May 2018, China began selecting its third group of astronauts, adding two new categories of astronauts: space engineers and payload specialists. Wu applied without hesitation.

Wu has worked to verify the thermal control systems for the Tianhe core module and the Wentian lab module of China's space station, and said that he would find operating the spacecraft he had helped test and develop to be "very meaningful."

In September 2020, he was recruited as an astronaut. When he received the good news, he had been busy adjusting thermal testing equipment for the Tianhe core module. He had been overwhelmed with excitement, he said. "Finally, I had the chance to do experiments in the real space environment."

Wu has made tremendous efforts to reach this point in his career. He completed specialized training which included physical exercises, underwater weightless-environment simulations, and manual rendezvous and docking operations.

He has always believed in the saying, "The harder you work, the luckier you get." And his dedication and hard work are what earned him his place on the Shenzhou-21 mission.

As a space engineer, his responsibilities include looking after the space station, managing its daily affairs, and handling equipment maintenance, repairs and upgrades.

For his first space mission, Wu has many aspirations: to carry out combustion and fluid-dynamics experiments related to thermal science, to look for the grasslands of his hometown on Earth through the space station porthole, and to experience a spacewalk.

"Integrating my dream into the country's great space endeavors is the best luck that the times have given me. All I can do in return is to make all-out efforts to live up to that," he told media ahead of departure. ■