Nasa began the first ever all-female spacewalk on Friday morning, sending two American astronauts out into the void to effect repairs to the International Space Station (ISS), following a power system failure at the laboratory high above Earth.
US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history as they stepped out of the orbiting lab and began floating around its structure in order to replace a faulty part of the solar power unit, which stopped working over the weekend.
The mission, which will be Koch’s fourth and Meir’s first, and is expected to last five and a half hours. In about a half-century of astronauts and cosmonauts occasionally venturing outside their space craft on dangerous missions in the void, there has never been an all-women team undertaking the delicate exercise.
The US space agency had originally planned an all-female spacewalk in March – which included Koch and fellow astronaut Anne McClain – but had to cancel it because of a shortage of medium-size suits.
McClain originally thought a large-size spacesuit would be fit for purpose but later concluded that a medium would be safer.
This decision was based on my recommendation,” McClain tweeted at the time from onboard the ISS.
“Leaders must make tough calls, and I am fortunate to work with a team who trusts my judgment.
“We must never accept a risk that can instead be mitigated. Safety of the crew and execution of the mission come first.”
She returned to Earth in June and Nasa sent a second medium-size spacesuit up to the station earlier this month.
America’s first female spacewalker from 35 years ago, Kathy Sullivan, expressed delight. She says it was good finally to have enough women in the astronaut corps and trained for spacewalking to enable such a mission to go ahead.
Spacesuits are made of many interchangeable parts, fitted together to accommodate different body shapes, with the suits assembled usually four months prior to flight.
While there are no differences between a male and female spacesuit, female astronauts usually wear a smaller size.
The scheduled spacewalk will see Koch and Meir venture outside the ISS wearing medium-size suits in order to replace the faulty device, known as the battery charge-discharge unit, which has been in operation since 2000.
There have been 227 spacewalkers since the first spacewalk in 1965. Only 14 women have performed spacewalks, always accompanied by men.
Koch, an electrical engineer, has been living in space since March while Meir, a marine biologist, joined the ISS crew in September. Both are members of Nasa’s Astronaut Class of 2013.
Koch is more than 200 days into her mission and is slated to set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman – with an expected total of 328 days in space.
Along with Koch and Meir, Nasa astronaut Andrew Morgan, Russian cosmonauts Aleksandr Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka, and the European Space Agency’s Luca Parmitano are part of the current ISS crew.
