On early Sunday morning, two Chinese astronauts accomplished work exterior of their nation’s Tiangong area station. The occasion was the second-ever spacewalk in China’s historical past. As The Guardian points out, it’s additionally the primary time its astronauts have accomplished a tandem extravehicular exercise (EVA).

Shenzhou-12 astronaut Boming Liu left the station at 8:11 PM ET on July third and was later joined by crewmate Hongbo Tang. Meanwhile, Haisheng Nie, the mission’s commander, stayed contained in the Tianhe “Harmony of the Heavens” crew module to assist them.

The two astronauts went out to do work on the module’s robotic arm whereas carrying China’s next-generation Feitian EVA fits. The total time they have been about 380 kilometers (236 miles) above the floor of Earth. The parts they put in will help future missions as China seems to be to finish its new space station sometime in 2022. Liu and Tang went again into Tianhe at roughly 2:57 AM ET, making the complete spacewalk round seven hours.

“The safe return of astronauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo to the Tianhe core module marks the complete success of the first spacewalk in our country’s space station construction,” China’s Manned Space Agency said in a statement.

The final time a Chinese astronaut left their craft was again in 2008 when Zhigang Zhai put China within the historical past books because the third-ever nation to finish a spacewalk. In the previous yr, the nation successfuly landed its first-ever rover on Mars and retrieved rock and soil samples from the Moon. The nation’s area company plans a second spacewalk earlier than the Shenzhou-12 crew returns to Earth later this yr.