SEVENTEEN astronauts from five countries, including the United States, Russia and China, participated in a series of social activities in Shenzhen on Friday, as part of the 27th annual conference of the Association of Space Explorers that opened Wednesday in Beijing and concludes today.

    The astronauts visited the ongoing Biotech and Health Industry Exhibition at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian CBD on Friday morning. In the afternoon, some of them shared their space-travel experiences with students while some visited the city’s scenic spots, including Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, Shenzhen Bay and OCT East.

    The astronauts showed a strong interest in vegetables and fruits grown from space seeds and food for astronauts at the biotech exhibition. Chinese astronaut Liu Boming said that it was amazing to see so much cutting-edge biotech products.

    Anousheh Ansari from the United States and Pavel Vinogradov and Yuri Gidzenko from Russia shared their space experiences with students at Futian High School and helped the students make model rockets.

    Russian astronaut Anatoli Ivanishin and Austrian astronaut Franz Viehboeck visited Fairy Lake Botanical Garden in Luohu District.

    Ivanishin said he was unaccustomed to space life in the first few days in space.

    “When night falls, we can recognize some major cities from space, including Beijing and Shanghai,” he said. “We usually play musical instruments to kill time. One of my fellow astronauts wrote a song in space called ‘Is somebody singing?’”

    Shenzhen is working with the Astronaut Research and Training Center of China and plans to develop an advanced aerospace industry base and innovation center in the city. The value of the city’s aerospace industry is expected to reach 150 billion yuan (US$24 billion) by 2020, according to Chinese media reports.

    (Zhang Yang)