MPSC 2021 Prelims Q96: Wang Yaping, an astronaut, who recently walked in space, is

Q: What is the answer to MPSC 2021 Prelims Q96?

(1). Correct — option (1), China. Wang Yaping is a Chinese astronaut, and the spacewalk the stem refers to took place on 7 November 2021, when the China Manned Space Agency announced that an extravehicular activity was under way outside the country's space station, carried out by Zhai Zhigang, the commander of the Shenzhou 13 mission, and by Wang Yaping. With it she became the first Chinese woman to walk in space, and she had already become the first woman to board the Tiangong space station when the mission arrived there in October 2021. It was not her first flight: she had flown earlier on Shenzhou 10 in 2013, during which she delivered a science lesson broadcast from orbit to schoolchildren across China, an event that made her one of the best-known figures of the country's space programme. Two pieces of context make the answer easy to fix in memory rather than merely to recall. The first is that China conducts human spaceflight independently: it launches its own crews on its own Shenzhou spacecraft, it has built its own space station, Tiangong, and it is not a partner in the International Space Station. So a report of a spacewalk from a station that is neither American nor Russian points to China before any name is read. The second is the sequence of Chinese women in space — Liu Yang was the first, on Shenzhou 9 in 2012, and Wang Yaping followed on Shenzhou 10 in 2013 and again on Shenzhou 13 in 2021, adding the first Chinese woman's spacewalk on the later flight. The paper was written on 23 January 2022, less than three months after the walk, which places this squarely in the recent-news window the Commission draws from. The Marathi column prints the country options in the genitive, as चीनच्या and so on; that is grammar, not a difference of meaning, and the answer remains option (1).

MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 96 of 100

State Services Preliminary Examination 2021, held 23 January 2022. Transcribed from the commission's own booklet (संच A); answer as per the official MPSC final answer key.

Wang Yaping, an astronaut, who recently walked in space, is a citizen of _________.

(1)China
(2)South Korea
(3)Japan
(4)Vietnam

Answer

(1)

Why

Correct — option (1), China. Wang Yaping is a Chinese astronaut, and the spacewalk the stem refers to took place on 7 November 2021, when the China Manned Space Agency announced that an extravehicular activity was under way outside the country's space station, carried out by Zhai Zhigang, the commander of the Shenzhou 13 mission, and by Wang Yaping. With it she became the first Chinese woman to walk in space, and she had already become the first woman to board the Tiangong space station when the mission arrived there in October 2021. It was not her first flight: she had flown earlier on Shenzhou 10 in 2013, during which she delivered a science lesson broadcast from orbit to schoolchildren across China, an event that made her one of the best-known figures of the country's space programme. Two pieces of context make the answer easy to fix in memory rather than merely to recall. The first is that China conducts human spaceflight independently: it launches its own crews on its own Shenzhou spacecraft, it has built its own space station, Tiangong, and it is not a partner in the International Space Station. So a report of a spacewalk from a station that is neither American nor Russian points to China before any name is read. The second is the sequence of Chinese women in space — Liu Yang was the first, on Shenzhou 9 in 2012, and Wang Yaping followed on Shenzhou 10 in 2013 and again on Shenzhou 13 in 2021, adding the first Chinese woman's spacewalk on the later flight. The paper was written on 23 January 2022, less than three months after the walk, which places this squarely in the recent-news window the Commission draws from. The Marathi column prints the country options in the genitive, as चीनच्या and so on; that is grammar, not a difference of meaning, and the answer remains option (1).

Why the others are wrong

(2)South Korea — South Korea has sent a person to space but has no independent human spaceflight programme and no space station of its own. Its single astronaut to date, Yi So-yeon, travelled to the International Space Station in 2008 aboard a Russian Soyuz, becoming the first Korean in space; she was a woman, which is what makes this option more than filler, because a candidate who remembers that the first Korean in orbit was female may attach that memory to any subsequent news of an Asian woman in space. But a flight as a visiting crew member on a partner's vehicle is a different thing from a spacewalk outside a station your own country built, and the news of 7 November 2021 concerned the latter. Keeping national programmes separate from national astronauts prevents this confusion entirely.
(3)Japan — Japan has a long and substantial presence in human spaceflight, but not an independent one. Its astronauts fly through the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on the launch vehicles of its partners, and Japan's contribution to the International Space Station is the Kibo laboratory module together with a cargo vehicle; it does not launch its own crews and has no station of its own. A candidate who associates space technology in East Asia with Japan's engineering reputation may choose it for that reason, which is precisely the association the option is placed to catch. The distinguishing fact is institutional rather than personal: the spacewalk in question was conducted outside a Chinese station under the direction of the China Manned Space Agency, and no other Asian country was in a position to conduct one.
(4)Vietnam — Vietnam has no human spaceflight programme. Its one connection with crewed spaceflight is historical and worth knowing for its own sake: Pham Tuan flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz in 1980 under the Interkosmos programme, which carried citizens of allied states as guest cosmonauts, and he was the first Vietnamese and the first Asian to go into space — a programme that also carried India's Rakesh Sharma in 1984. That is a flight as a guest of another country's programme forty years before the event in this stem, and it has no bearing on a spacewalk from a Chinese station in 2021. The option completes a set of four Asian countries and rewards a candidate who can distinguish a country that has produced an astronaut from a country that operates a space programme.

Concept

China's human spaceflight programme is one of only three in the world capable of launching people into orbit independently, the others being Russia and the United States. Its crewed spacecraft is the Shenzhou, and its space station, Tiangong, was assembled in orbit through a series of missions of which Shenzhou 13, launched in October 2021, was an early crewed occupation; China is not a participant in the International Space Station, which is why its activities are reported separately and why a spacewalk from a Chinese station is unmistakable once the institutional picture is clear. Wang Yaping is a serving pilot and astronaut who flew on Shenzhou 10 in 2013 and on Shenzhou 13 in 2021. Her 2013 flight is remembered in China for a lesson she broadcast from orbit to schoolchildren; her 2021 flight made her the first woman aboard Tiangong and, on 7 November 2021, the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk, working outside the station with the mission commander Zhai Zhigang. The first Chinese woman in space was Liu Yang, on Shenzhou 9 in 2012. For an Indian candidate the comparison worth holding is with India's own programme: Rakesh Sharma flew in 1984 aboard a Soviet Soyuz under the Interkosmos arrangement, and India's independent crewed effort is the Gaganyaan programme of the Indian Space Research Organisation, which was under development at the time this paper was written.

Space is a standing subject in MPSC's science and current-affairs sections, and the Commission's questions about it are usually of the who, which country and which mission variety rather than the technical variety. That makes them cheap to prepare and expensive to skip. The pattern of this item is one seen throughout the paper: four countries from one region, so that a candidate cannot narrow the field by plausibility and must actually know the news. What converts recall into reasoning here is a small amount of structural knowledge — which countries can launch humans at all — because that alone eliminates three of the four options before any name is considered. This is generally the most efficient way to prepare space questions: learn the programmes and the vehicles first, then attach the people and the dates to them. The Indian layer must be prepared alongside, since MPSC will ask about Gaganyaan, about Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan, about NavIC and about ISRO's launch vehicles at least as often as it asks about another country's mission, and the two bodies of knowledge reinforce each other.

Key facts

Wang Yaping is a Chinese astronaut. On 7 November 2021 the China Manned Space Agency announced a spacewalk by mission commander Zhai Zhigang and Wang Yaping, making her the first Chinese woman to perform an extravehicular activity.
She flew on Shenzhou 13, which reached the Tiangong space station in October 2021, and she was the first woman to board that station; she had flown earlier on Shenzhou 10 in 2013, when she delivered a science lesson broadcast from orbit to schoolchildren in China.
The first Chinese woman in space was Liu Yang, who flew on Shenzhou 9 in 2012; Wang Yaping followed on Shenzhou 10 in 2013, which makes her the second Chinese woman to reach orbit and, from November 2021, the first to walk in space.
China launches its own crews on its own Shenzhou spacecraft and operates its own station, Tiangong; it is not a partner in the International Space Station, which is why a spacewalk from a Chinese station is unambiguous.
Of the other countries offered, South Korea's only astronaut, Yi So-yeon, flew to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz in 2008; Japan's astronauts fly through JAXA on partners' vehicles and its ISS contribution is the Kibo module; and Vietnam's Pham Tuan flew on a Soviet Soyuz in 1980 under the Interkosmos programme that also carried India's Rakesh Sharma in 1984.

Ask which of these countries can put a person outside a station of its own — that one structural fact eliminates three options before any name is read

China→LAUNCHES ITS OWN CREWS, ON ITS OWN SHENZHOU SPACECRAFT, TO ITS OWN STATION — Tiangong — and is not a partner in the International Space Station, which is why a spacewalk from a station that is neither American nor Russian points here before any name is read. Wang Yaping flew on Shenzhou 13, reaching Tiangong in October 2021 as the first woman aboard it, and on 7 November 2021 the China Manned Space Agency announced an extravehicular activity by mission commander Zhai Zhigang and by her — making her the first Chinese woman to walk in space. She had flown earlier on Shenzhou 10 in 2013, when she broadcast a science lesson from orbit to schoolchildren across China

South Korea→Has sent a person to space, but has no independent human spaceflight programme and no station. Its only astronaut to date, Yi So-yeon, travelled to the International Space Station in 2008 aboard a Russian Soyuz, becoming the first Korean in space — and she was a woman, which is what makes this more than filler: a candidate who remembers that may attach it to any later news of an Asian woman in orbit

Japan→A major and long-standing presence in human spaceflight, but not an independent one. JAXA's astronauts fly on partners' launch vehicles, and Japan's contribution to the International Space Station is the Kibo laboratory module and a cargo vehicle. It launches no crews of its own and has no station of its own — the option is placed to catch an association with the country's engineering reputation

Vietnam→No human spaceflight programme. Its one connection is historical and worth knowing for itself: Pham Tuan flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz in 1980 under the Interkosmos programme, which carried citizens of allied states as guest cosmonauts and which also carried India's Rakesh Sharma in 1984 — a flight as another country's guest, forty years before the event in this stem

Wang Yaping is Chinese — option (1). Keep China's two prominent women astronauts apart: Liu Yang was the first Chinese woman in space, on Shenzhou 9 in 2012; Wang Yaping followed on Shenzhou 10 in 2013 and was the first to walk in space, in November 2021, less than three months before this paper was written. The comparison worth holding for an Indian candidate is India's own: Rakesh Sharma flew in 1984 on a Soviet Soyuz under Interkosmos, and the independent crewed effort is ISRO's Gaganyaan programme, under development when this paper was set.

Study next

China's space programme — the Shenzhou spacecraft, the Tiangong station, and why China is outside the International Space Station partnershipIndia's human spaceflight effort — Rakesh Sharma's flight of 1984 under Interkosmos and the Gaganyaan programme of ISROThe International Space Station — its partners, its modules including Japan's Kibo, and the difference between a partner nation and a visiting astronaut's nationISRO's principal missions and systems — Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan, the PSLV and GSLV launch vehicles, and the NavIC navigation constellationFirsts in spaceflight worth keeping as a list — first human, first woman, first spacewalk, first Indian, first Chinese woman, and the year of each

Common traps

Confusing a country that has produced an astronaut with a country that runs a space programme. South Korea and Vietnam belong to the first group only
Choosing Japan because of its reputation in technology. Japan is a major space power but flies its astronauts on partners' vehicles and has no station of its own
Mixing up China's two prominent women astronauts. Liu Yang was the first Chinese woman in space, in 2012; Wang Yaping was the first to walk in space, in 2021
Reading the Marathi genitive forms of the country names as though they carried a different meaning. They are grammatical case endings and nothing more

Space questions in MPSC papers come in four recognisable shapes: which country conducted a mission, who was the astronaut or which agency ran it, what a named mission achieved, and which was the first of something. The current-affairs versions draw on the eighteen months before the paper, so a mission of the previous autumn is prime material, as this one is. The Indian versions draw on ISRO's programme and recur every year without fail. Both are best prepared from a single sheet listing agency, country, vehicle, mission, year and one fact, since the Commission will ask for whichever element the candidate is least likely to have recorded. Where an option set consists of four countries from one region, as here, structural knowledge is worth more than recall: knowing which of the four can launch a human being at all reduces the question to a single candidate before the news is consulted.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Wang Yaping, who performed a spacewalk in November 2021, was a crew member of which mission ?
- (a)Shenzhou 9
- (b)Shenzhou 10
- (c)Shenzhou 13
- (d)Soyuz TMA-12
Answer(c) Shenzhou 13. The mission reached China's Tiangong space station in October 2021, and on 7 November 2021 Wang Yaping went outside the station with the mission commander Zhai Zhigang, becoming the first Chinese woman to perform a spacewalk. She had flown earlier on Shenzhou 10 in 2013; Shenzhou 9 in 2012 carried Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman in space; and Soyuz TMA-12 was the Russian flight that took South Korea's only astronaut to the International Space Station in 2008.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following countries is NOT a partner in the International Space Station and operates a space station of its own ?
- (a)Japan
- (b)China
- (c)Canada
- (d)South Korea
Answer(b) China. China conducts human spaceflight independently, launching its crews on Shenzhou spacecraft and operating its own station, Tiangong, and it is not a participant in the International Space Station. Japan and Canada are both ISS partners, Japan contributing the Kibo laboratory module; South Korea has neither a station nor an independent crewed programme, its single astronaut having flown to the ISS on a Russian vehicle in 2008.