In one giant leap for womankind, the first all-female spacewalk is under way, after an earlier cancelled attempt was mired in controversy.
Flight engineers Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will venture out into the vacuum of space in a historic five-and-a-half-hour mission, which will see them replace a power controller on the International Space Station . A total of 227 astronauts and cosmonauts have completed a spacewalk, but only 14 of them have been women - and all of those have done so alongside a male astronaut.NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch prepare spacesuits and tools they will use on their first spacewalk together, 15 October 2019
The first woman to perform a spacewalk, officially known as an EVA , was Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya on the 25 July 1984.NASA has been keen to address gender balance within its astronaut ranks in recent years and currently intends to send the first woman to the moon by 2024.an exclusive interview with Sky News
, the space agency's head Jim Bridenstine said he expected this astronaut would be the first member of her crew to step on to the surface, saying:"I would imagine that the next person we have walking on the moon will be a woman."
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