Pioneering female space scientist dies at 88

Wu Meirong, a distinguished scientist in China's space industry and the only Chinese woman to have received the internationally renowned Theodore von Karman Award, died in Beijing on Sunday at the age of 88.

Born in January 1936 in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, Wu was admitted to Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, in 1952.

In 1954, she was sent to the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in the Soviet Union to study automatic control technology.