NASA’s First All-Female Spacewalk Has Been Successfully Accomplished

NASA’s First All-Female Spacewalk Has Been Successfully Accomplished

The people can have a glimpse of NASA’s first all-female spacewalk this week. This will be the first spacewalk taking place after almost 61 Years. The astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch are going to take the mission beyond the International Space Station (ISS) on October 21, 2019. The battery charge-discharge unit issues of the space station will all be replaced. The spacewalk is believed to encourage women to contribute more in research related to space. NASA will have the details broadcasted right from the morning and last for around 6 Hours. The astronauts will be repairing the faulty power regulator that has been in use from 2000 until now. The new lithium-ion batteries have also failed to activate them and hence, the women crew will have all the overall power supply retained.

NASA is planning for 10 spacewalks in the next 3 months and it is a pace that the company had not experienced after completion of the ISS in 2011. There will be 5 spacewalks to repair a cosmic particle detector in November and December followed by the rescheduling of 3 spacewalks for battery replacement. In October 1984, Kathryn Sullivan was the first American woman to complete a spacewalk and since then there have been 220 spacewalks performed at the ISS. This will, however, be the first spacewalk where the entire crew will consist of women and no men. It will be Meir’s first and Koch’s fourth spacewalk. The women are expected to remain in the orbit until February 2020. This will be the longest spacewalk such that it will break Peggy Whitson’s record of 288 days.

The all-female spacewalk was supposed to take place earlier but due to the spacesuit availability issues was found to be delayed. In a similar context, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine after a long study developed a new red, white, and blue space suit for both sexes belonging to any size. The spacesuit is designed for the 2024 Artemis Program to help astronauts bend and walk normally. The spacesuit will help control temperature, pressure, and add modular compartments near the chest and hip. The spacesuit has been named the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). This suit is expected to be soon used in future spacewalk missions and other space programs.

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