NASA's plan of conducting an all-female spacewalk may finally materialise this month.
As Cnet reports, astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir are set to do the first-ever all-female spacewalk on 21 October. Meir said that the International Space Station (ISS) is qualified to perform the spacewalks and that there are enough properly sized suits this time.
The all-female spacewalk was earlier planned for International Women's Month in March. However, it was stalled due to the lack of enough medium-sized suits.
The NASA all-women spacewalk is now scheduled for 21 October. Image: NASA
Later that month Koch did the spacewalk with fellow astronaut Nick Hague.
On Friday, NASA tweeted about six upcoming spacewalks this month and five more in November and December this year. Jessica Meir said that during the walks they'll upgrade the ISS with new lithium-ion batteries that'll better conserve the station's power supply.
.@Astro_Christina and @Astro_Jessica are scheduled for a spacewalk together on Oct. 21. They recently talked about how their accomplishments are viewed in terms of being female astronauts. pic.twitter.com/yTJ0kVH40f
— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) October 4, 2019
Spacewalks are carried out for any of many reasons including work outside a spacecraft, science experiments or taking new equipment out for a spin, NASA says. Astronauts also fix satellites or spacecraft already in space during spacewalks, making it unnecessary (not to mention, a lot easier) than returning them to Earth for repairs.
The five spacewalks scheduled for November and December are aimed at repairing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
With inputs from ANI.