NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch marked their third all-woman spacewalk together. They completed the extravehicular activity by paying tribute to the late Martin Luther King Jr. and replacing the batteries outside the International Space Station (ISS).
As a pair, Jessica and Christina completed the upgrade of power channels of the station’s solar array. Also, they have become the first two women to work in the space vaccum. They took six hours and 58 minutes to finish the spacewalk, starting at 6:35am and ending at 1:33pm EST.
At a total of 226 spacewalks have been conducted by the space station crew members, in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. Coming up this all-woman spacewalk, it was Meir’s third and Koch’s sixth.
NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and space station commander Luca Parmitano of European Space Agency will conduct the next spacewalk on 25 January. This pair will finish installing a new cooling apparatus and lines, verify if they are ready for use.
Sharing this good news on Instagram, ISS wrote, “At 1:33pm EST, @astro_jessica and @astro_christina concluded their third spacewalk together. After working 6 hours and 58 minutes the two successfully completed the battery upgrade for one channel on one pair of the station’s solar arrays.”
