Just half a year later after NASA announced that the first all-female spacewalk would be canned thanks to a lack of appropriately sized space suits, it looks like it’s back on the cards.
A spacewalk conducted by astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir is scheduled to go ahead on October 21, facilitated by NASA flying up another medium-sized spacesuit to the International Space Station.
.@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
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) October 4, 2019
The all-female spacewalk scheduled back in March was cancelled due to both astronauts requiring a medium-sized torso fitted to the spacesuit, something the astronauts were unable to arrange with the time and resources at hand.
With the new suit available, Koch and Meir will be undertaking one of many spacewalks being conducted in the upcoming months as part of a project to replace the nickel-hydrogen batteries on the ISS’s truss with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries.
The original walk was going to be conducted by Koch and astronaut Anne McClain, who has since returned to the Earth and become embroiled in what is potentially the first instance of a crime being committed in space.
You can follow along with the action on Twitter, which (while it might be the most trivial detail in this) is still maybe the craziest thing to me about where we are at with our space technology:
All hands on deck! Suited up this week in preparation for 5 spacewalks in a row to upgrade the @Space_Station solar array batteries. Work begins on Sunday! Watch the spacewalk live at https://t.co/zCjhcX2LD1 pic.twitter.com/VQppdAhGba
— Christina H Koch (@Astro_Christina) October 4, 2019
