Nasa astronauts make history with first all-female spacewalk
- Christina Koch and Jessica Meir exited the ISS on Friday, the first time in a half-century of spacewalking that a woman floated out without a male crewmate
- America’s first female spacewalker from 35 years ago, Kathy Sullivan, said she is delighted
The world’s first female spacewalking team made history high above Earth on Friday, floating out of the International Space Station to fix a broken part of the power network.
As Nasa astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir emerged one by one, it marked the first time in a half-century of spacewalking that a woman floated out without a male crewmate.
America’s first female spacewalker from 35 years ago, Kathy Sullivan, was delighted. She said It’s good to finally have enough women in the astronaut corps and trained for spacewalking for this to happen.
Nasa leaders – along with women and others around the world – cheered Koch and Meir on. At the same time, many noted that this will hopefully become routine in the future.
“We’ve got qualified women running the control, running space centres, commanding the station, commanding spaceships and doing spacewalks,” Sullivan said earlier this week. “And golly, gee whizz, every now and then there’s more than one woman in the same place.”
