Ye Guangfu

Ye Guangfu: China's Record-Holder in Orbit

Ye Guangfu lost his father at age eight and grew up helping work the family farm in Sichuan Province. Four decades later he holds the Chinese national record for cumulative time in space — 374 days, 13 hours, and 57 minutes across two missions — and became the first Chinese taikonaut ever to spend more than a full year in orbit over a career. Between the farm and the record stands a two-decade climb through fighter cockpits, European cave systems, and two long-duration missions to China's Tiangong space station.

A Farmer's Son in the Cockpit

Ye was born in September 1980 in Shuangliu County, Sichuan Province, to a farming family; some accounts place his hometown within greater Chengdu. He had one elder sister, and after his father's death when Ye was eight, farm labor became part of his childhood alongside his schooling at Wan'an Middle School and Taiping High School. He went on to join the People's Liberation Army Air Force, spending four years as a jet fighter pilot and another four as a flight instructor, accumulating roughly 1,100 total flight hours before his career took a different turn. He eventually reached the rank of Senior Colonel in the PLA's Strategic Support Force, the branch that oversees China's space, cyber, and electronic warfare operations.

Selection, Training, and a Cave in Sardinia

China selected Ye as part of its second group of astronaut candidates in 2010, and he qualified for spaceflight duty in 2014, joining the small pool of taikonauts eligible for assignment to Tiangong missions. In 2016 he became the first Chinese participant in the European Space Agency's CAVES program, an underground training exercise conducted in caves on the Italian island of Sardinia alongside astronauts from the United States, Russia, Spain, and Japan. The exercise put international crews through days of climbing, exploration, and surveying in dark, damp, disorienting conditions meant to simulate the psychological and logistical stress of an off-world expedition; Ye's contribution to the exercise was recognized when one of the caves explored during the program was named the "Guangming," or "Light," Gallery in his honor. He served as backup crew for the Shenzhou 12 mission before finally earning a flight assignment of his own.

Six Months as a Rookie, Then Command

Ye flew his first mission, Shenzhou 13, from October 2021 to April 2022, serving alongside commander Zhai Zhigang and completing China's first six-month human spaceflight. He carried out his first spacewalk on November 26, 2021, working alongside Zhai on what was Zhai's third career EVA, and reporting from the mission described him operating the station's robotic arm with precision and even performing music aboard the orbital module during downtime — small, human details from a mission built around endurance more than spectacle.

Two years later, at age 43, Ye returned to space as commander of Shenzhou 18, launching April 25, 2024, at the head of a crew of two rookies, Li Cong and Li Guangsu. He called it "a fresh start," acknowledging that commanding a crew of first-time flyers on another six-month station rotation carried a different, heavier set of operational responsibilities than flying as the junior member of an experienced crew. On May 28, 2024, Ye and crewmate Li Guangsu carried out what was reported as China's longest spacewalk to date, an approximately 8.5-hour excursion focused on installing debris-protection equipment on the station's exterior — grueling, technically exacting work performed in a pressurized suit far longer than a typical EVA.

A Chinese National Record

Across his two flights, Ye logged 374 days, 13 hours, and 57 minutes in space, a figure that made him the first Chinese taikonaut to pass a cumulative year in orbit and set the national endurance record for China's human spaceflight program. His two spacewalks together totaled 14 hours and 34 minutes. He returned to Earth from Shenzhou 18 in late 2024, greeted by state media coverage that framed his homecoming, fittingly, as a "radiant return."

Public Face of the Program

Beyond his flights, Ye has become one of the more visible faces of China's crewed spaceflight effort. He served as the lead torchbearer at the opening ceremony of the 31st FISU World University Games in his home region of Chengdu in July 2023, a public appearance that state coverage explicitly tied to the symbolism of space exploration and illumination — the same imagery later echoed when Sardinian cave scientists named a gallery after him. He is married, has one son and one daughter, and speaks Chinese, English, and Russian, the trilingual fluency expected of taikonauts who train alongside international partners and, at times, Russian cosmonauts.

Why Ye Is Called a Genius

Ye's record is a case study in accumulated operational mastery rather than a single insight or invention. Chinese state media describes him in terms of precision, endurance, and steadiness — a taikonaut who improved from rookie to commander, and whose robotic-arm work and spacewalk execution are singled out for skill rather than any claim to raw brilliance. None of the sourced coverage uses the word "genius" about Ye; the vocabulary is disciplined, precise, and veteran. What is genuinely remarkable is the compounding of very different competencies over more than a decade: military jet flying, instructor-level teaching, international cave-survival training, six months living aboard a space station as a junior crew member, and then command of a second six-month mission with two first-time flyers depending on his judgment. That is craft built through repetition and institutional trust, refined under the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese space program's demanding selection process, rather than a display of exceptional native intellect. The honest description is elite, battle-tested competence — the product of training, not a flash of genius.

Legacy

Ye's endurance record stands as a marker of how far China's crewed spaceflight program has matured since its first orbital flight in 2003: from a single astronaut on a short solo mission to a taikonaut logging more than a year in space across successive long-duration station rotations, one of them in command. His path from a fatherless Sichuan farm childhood to commanding China's space station crew gives the program a personal narrative it has used deliberately in state media, and his continued involvement in public ceremony suggests his role as a symbol of the program will likely outlast his time as an active flyer.

Achievements

• Worked as astronaut, fighter pilot and astronaut