Yang Liwei

Yang Liwei is a major general, military pilot, and People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps taikonaut. In October 2003, he became the first person sent into space by the Chinese space program. This mission, Shenzhou 5, made China the third country to independently send humans into space. He is currently a vice chief designer of China Manned Space Engineering.

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In 2014, China's first astronaut Yang Liwei joined Buzz Aldrin at the International Planetary Congress to explore possibilities for expanding human spaceflight cooperation. The movie "Gravity" was part of a discussion on rescuing astronauts in peril between space stations

Yang Liwei became China's first citizen in space when he launched in 2003. However, William Anders of Apollo 8 was born in Hong Kong, while American astronauts Shannon Lucid and Taylor Wang were both born in Shanghai