China on Tuesday afternoon successfully sent its first astronaut-teacher into space aboard its Shenzhou-10 spacecraft

Three astronauts are on board the spacecraft -- commander Nie Haisheng; Zhang Xiaoguang, assistant to Nie; and female crew member Wang Yaping, who will broadcast a lecture to students on Earth about physics from a space laboratory 300 km above the ground.

Shenzhou-10, atop an upgraded Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 5:38 p.m. Tuesday

Wang will teach about motion in a microgravity environment, the surface tension of liquid, and help students understand the concepts of weight and mass and Newton's Laws. She will also demonstrate while lecturing in orbit, and interact with students and teachers on Earth

Her two fellow crew members will act as cameramen and assistant during the lecture.

"We are all students in facing the vast universe," said Wang on Monday when meeting journalists. "We are looking forward to joining our young friends to learn and explore the mystical and beautiful universe."

Born in east China's Shandong Province, the hometown of China's most famous educationist Confucius (551-479 BC), the 33-year-old Wang is the second Chinese female astronaut after Liu Yang, who entered the record books in the Shenzhou-9 mission in June last year.

In May 2010, Wang became a member of the second batch of Chinese astronauts and was selected to the crew of the Shenzhou-10 mission in April 2013. She was a transport aircraft pilot in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force with experience of 1,600 hours of flying.

Source from xinhuanet