Ye Guangfu | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 叶光富 | |||||||
 Ye in 2021 | |||||||
| Born | September 1980 (age 43) | ||||||
| Status | Active | ||||||
| Space career | |||||||
| PLAAC Taikonaut | |||||||
Previous occupation | Fighter pilot, PLAAF | ||||||
| Rank | Senior Colonel, PLASSF | ||||||
Time in space | 182 days, 9 hours and 32 minutes | ||||||
| Selection | Chinese Group 2 | ||||||
Total EVAs | 1 | ||||||
Total EVA time | 6 hours, 11 minutes[1] | ||||||
| Missions | Shenzhou 13 | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 叶光富 | ||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 葉光富 | ||||||
| |||||||
Ye Guangfu (Chinese: 叶光富; pinyin: Yè Guāngfù; born September 1980)[2] is a Chinese fighter pilot and People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC) taikonaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program.
Ye was born in Shuangliu County, Sichuan in September 1980.[3][4] He has an elder sister.[3] His father died when Ye was 8, and he helped with farm work from childhood.[3] Ye's elementary education was at Wan'an Middle School (万安中学) and secondary education at Taiping High School (太平中学).[3]
As a People's Liberation Army Air Force pilot, Ye spent four years as an instructor and four years as a jet fighter pilot and amassed a total of 1,100 hours of flight time. He was selected to join the second batch of Chinese astronauts in 2010 and qualified in 2014.[5][6]
Ye made his first public appearance after participating in the ESA CAVES mission of 2016 organised by the ESA, making him the first Chinese participant of such an event.[7]
He was part of the backup crew for Shenzhou 12,[8] and has been selected to fly on Shenzhou 13 to the Tiangong space station.[9]
On 26 November 2021, Ye and Shenzhou 13 commander Zhai Zhigang carried out the second EVA of the mission, marking Ye's first spacewalk and Zhai's third.[10]
Ye is married and has a son and a daughter.[3][11] His father-in-law is a pilot.[3]
Apart from his native language Chinese, he is also fluent in English and Russian.