Ye Guangfu

Ye Guangfu
Ye Guangfu
叶光富
	Ye in 2021
Born	1 September 1980 (age 41); Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Status	Active
	Space career
PLAAC Taikonaut
Previous occupation	Fighter pilot, PLAAF
Rank	Senior Colonel, PLASSF
Time in space	Currently in space
Selection	Chinese Group 2
Total EVAs	1
Total EVA time	6 hours, 11 minutes
Missions	Shenzhou 13
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	叶光富
Traditional Chinese	葉光富
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Yè Guāngfù

Ye Guangfu (Chinese: 叶光富; pinyin: Yè Guāngfù; born 1 September 1980)^[2] is a Chinese fighter pilot and People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC) taikonaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program.

Biography[]

Ye was born in Shuangliu District, Chengdu, Sichuan on 1 September 1980.^[3]

Apart from his native language Chinese, he is also fluent in English and Russian.

Career[]

As a People's Liberation Army Air Force pilot, Ye spent four years as an instructor and four years as a jet fighter pilot and amassed a total of 1,100 hours of flight time. He was selected to join the second batch of Chinese astronauts in 2010 and qualified in 2014.^[4]^[5]

Ye made his first public appearance after participating in the ESA CAVES mission of 2016 organised by the ESA, making him the first Chinese participant of such an event.^[6]

He was part of the backup crew for Shenzhou 12,^[7] and has been selected to fly on Shenzhou 13 to the Tiangong space station.^[8]

On 26 November 2021, Ye and Shenzhou 13 commander Zhai Zhigang carried out the second EVA of the mission, marking Ye's first spacewalk and Zhai's third.^[9]