Wang Yaping

Wang Yaping

Wang Yaping (王亚平), a former air force pilot, will join a crew of three on Shenzhou 10 and will become only the second woman astronaut in space after Liu Yang who was on board the Shenzhou 9 mission in 2012.

Wang was one of the two candidates to become China's first female astronaut in space on the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft. But she lost to Liu Yang, the other candidate to be in the three-member crew.

Wang was born in April, 1978, in east China's Shandong Province. She is the eldest of two daughters. In 1997, she enrolled at the Changchun Air Force Aviation College. Wang Yaping first took to the air in 1998 and subsequently racked up more than 800 flying hours during the next nine years. In 2001, now holding a bachelor's degree in military science, Wang was assigned as a military air transport pilot in Wuhan. Since then, she has carried out many important tasks including military exercises, disaster relief operations following the Wenchuan Earthquake and rain cloud dispersal operations during the Beijing Olympics.

Wang Yaping

As one of the 7th batch of Chinese female pilots, Wang is trained to pilot four types of aircraft. Her husband is also a pilot.

The Shenzhou 9 spacecraft was launched on June 16, 2012. Three astronauts, two male Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang and one female Liu Yang, boarded Shenzhou 9 spacecraft to fulfill China's first manned space docking mission.