China's First Astronaut Yang Liwei Promotes TV Series 'Shen Zhou' (Photo : Getty Images)
There is speculation if a knock that Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei heard in 2003 when he was on his maiden flight aboard Shenzhou was made by an alien. Were aliens attempting to enter his space capsule is one of the theories being floated around after China’s first astronaut recalled the experience in an interview with media.
The noise was similar to a hammer hitting an iron bucket, the 51-year-old retired astronaut - presently a major general in China’s Air Force – recalled, The Sun reported. He did not hear the same knocking sound when he eventually returned to Earth and tried to imitate the sound using instruments, but he heard it while aboard the space capsule several times.
Yang Liwei, during the 21-hour space journey, circled the Earth several times. He said the knock did not come from the inside or outside his space capsule. When Yang Liwei first heard the noise, he became nervous and approached the space vessel’s porthole to check.
But when he peered, the Chinese space traveler saw nothing extraordinary. Another Chinese astronaut also heard the same knocking noise while in outer space, but since Yang Liwei was the pioneer of space travel in China, he warned other astronauts who followed him of the knocking phenomenon and assured them it is a normal event when in space.
Until now, no one could explain what caused the knocking noise, Yang Liwei said, Mirror reported. Before he became an astronaut, he was a 1983 graduate of the No. 2 Aviation College of China’s Air Force. To prepare for the trip to space, Yang Liwei attended sessions at the Beijing-based Astronaut Training Base where he and other future astronauts studied aviation dynamics, aerodynamics, geophysics, meteorology, astronomy, space navigation, and the design principles and structure of rockets and spacecraft, according to China.org.
