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Cai Xuzhe
Cai Xuzhe
Born	May 1976 (age 48); Shenzhou, Hebei, China
Status	Active
	Space career
PLAAC astronaut
Previous occupation	People's Liberation Army Air Force pilot
Rank	Senior Colonel, People's Liberation Army Ground Force
Time in space	233 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes [refresh]; (currently in space)
Selection	Chinese Group 2 (2010)
Total EVAs	3
Total EVA time	18 hours, 52 minutes
Missions	Shenzhou 14; Shenzhou 19
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	蔡旭哲
Traditional Chinese	蔡旭哲
Hanyu Pinyin
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin	Cài Xùzhé

Cai Xuzhe (Chinese: 蔡旭哲; born May 1976)^[2] is a Chinese People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC) taikonaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program.

Biography

Cai was born in Shenzhou, Hengshui, Hebei province in 1976.^[2] His grandparents come from a scholarly family, teaching in the downtown county and village, respectively, and were veteran party members before the founding of the People's Republic of China.^[3] His third uncle was a soldier.^[3] Cai graduated from the Baoding Branch of the Changchun Flight Academy of the Air Force.^[3] He served as a fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, and was subsequently selected to be an astronaut in 2010.^[4] His name was revealed as part of Group 2 in 2011.^[5]

He was on board the Tiangong space station as part of the Shenzhou 14 mission in 2022, spending 182 days in space.^[6] He completed two spacewalks on 17 September and 17 November both with Chen Dong.

He returned to Tiangong on 29 October 2024 as the commander of the Shenzhou 19 mission.^[7] Then, on 17 December 2024, during this mission's first EVA, he broke the record with Song Lingdong for the longest spacewalk in human history, of 9 hours and 6 minutes, with the assistance of the space station's robotic arms and ground-based scientific personnel, completed tasks such as the installation of space debris protection devices, inspection, and maintenance of external equipment and facilities.^[8]