The first spacewalk to be conducted entirely by women is scheduled for Oct. 21, NASA announced, nearly seven months after an all-female spacewalk was canceled because two properly fitted spacesuits were not readily available. Christina Koch and Anne McClain, the two astronauts who were scheduled to conduct the spacewalk in March, both needed a medium-size torso component, but only one was available. The spacewalk did take place — it just wasn’t all-female. Ms. Koch conducted the six-hour mission with fellow astronaut Nick Hague.
Ms. Koch will now set out with astronaut Jessica Meir this month on the first women-only venture outside of the International Space Station. They are set to install lithium-ion batteries to better serve the station’s power supply. It will be the fourth of 10 spacewalks scheduled for the next three months, which might set a record pace of complex spacewalks since the space station was completed in 2011, NASA said. “I think it’s important because of the historical nature of what we’re doing and in the past, women haven’t always been at the table,” Ms. Koch said on NASA TV. “And it’s wonderful to be contributing to the human spaceflight program at a time when all contributions are being accepted.”
Credits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/science/NASA-female-spacewalk.html
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