For the first time in space history, an all-female spacewalk was conducted by astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir at the International Space Station.
A series of spacewalks have been arranged after Luca Parmitano from Italy took over as the commander at ISS when Alexei Ovchinin from Russia left. The ISS system is being upgraded and this Friday the two females hailing from the United States of America, left the Quest airlock to work on the failed power systems and replace the batteries. The expected time of the spacewalk was around six hours, but it lasted successfully for seven hours.
Christina had red stripes on her spacesuit wearing the helmet marked number 18 and Meir had no stripes and wore the helmet marked number 11. This was done so that the two can be differentiated during the spacewalk as the control room watched them from the earth through the cameras installed on the Station.
Credits: NASA
Astronaut Christina Koch is an electrical engineer who is also going to break the record soon as the longest single spaceflight by a woman, as reported by the US space agency NASA. Jessica Meir, a marine biologist, recently joined the crew station at the International Space Station for the first time and this was her first spacewalk and she became the 15th woman to walk in space. Last year, such a spacewalk was canceled due to a lack of spacesuit of the right size.
After completion of the tasks, the failed system will be returned to the earth after it is loaded by the ISS team members on to the next SpaceX Dragon resupply ship so that it can be further analyzed.
An out of this world achievement!
NASA live-streamed the event which was watched by many viewers from around the world and Ms. Koch and Ms. Meir also took questions from a girl scout group and from the public on twitter and were congratulated live by the US President Donald Trump for this historic achievement.
Many space enthusiasts and prominent personalities appreciated the successful and significant achievement.
