"Men and women have their advantages and capabilities in carrying out space missions. They can complement each other and better complete their mission,” says Liu Yang, an alumna from the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua who carries out the spaceflight mission of Shenzhou-14 launched today.

China's first female astronaut in space, Yang served as a crew member of Shenzhou-9, the first manned mission to the Chinese space station Tiangong 1 in 2012, and performed experiments in space medicine. “I have full confidence. Many foreign female astronauts have been into space.”

Before taking astronaut training, she was a veteran pilot with 1,680 hours of flying experience. "When I was a pilot, I flew in the sky. Now that I am an astronaut, I will fly in space. This will be a much higher and farther flight.”