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Senior Colonel Wang Yaping gives a science lecture to students from Tiangong space station. [Photo/cnjxol.com]

Chinese astronauts gave a class to students around China, including those from Pinghu, a county-level city in Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang province on Dec 9 as they orbited in the Tiangong space station, local media reported.

It was the first lecture of the Tiangong Class, or Heavenly Palace Class, China's first extraterrestrial lecture series to popularize space science.

Major General Zhai Zhigang, Senior Colonel Wang Yaping and Senior Colonel Ye Guangfu, all members of the Shenzhou XIII mission crew, greeted students, teachers and other participants when the lecture started at 3:54 pm. They showed viewers how they live and work inside the space station, which currently consists of a core module, a spacecraft and two robotic cargo spaceships.

The astronauts displayed their exercise equipment and a specially designed space suit, and conducted demonstrations on physical phenomena in microgravity, such as "disappearing buoyancy" and a "water ball". The astronauts also answered questions from students during the lecture.