It’s been 55 years since Valentina Tereshkova became the world’s first female cosmonaut to ever step foot in space. After that happened, it took 20 years for Svetlana Savitskaya to become the second female cosmonaut in space. In fact, Svetlana Savitskaya also did a spacewalk two years later. Nonetheless, NASA has announced that on March 29th, the world’s first all-female spacewalk is going to take place.
The World’s First All-Female Spacewalk
There have been 213 space walks in total at the ISS since 1998. Theses spacewalks are used for maintenance, repairs and to test new technology or make science experiments. The teams that spacewalked were always all-male or male-female. Therefore, a big historic event is going to take place on March 29th when astronauts Christina Koch and Ann McClain will make the world’s first all-female spacewalk.
Their Mission
The two female astronauts will not be doing the spacewalk only to enjoy the view, they also have an important mission. Christina Koch and Ann McClain need to replace batteries on the ISS that were installed last summer. The two female astronauts are going to be assisted from the ground by flight director Mary Lawrence and Kristen Facciol of the Canadian Space Agency located in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
As you can expect, the astronauts and flight directors are really excited for this event. They are going to make history and Kristen Facciol even made the following statement on her official Twitter account: “I cannot contain my excitement!”.
Stephanie Schierholz is a NASA public affairs officer and she had the following statement to make about the historic event that will take place on March 29th: “It definitely resonates with women around the agency that we’re at this point”. Stephanie Schierholz also let everyone know that having the first all-female spacewalk is important, what matters more is to make sure that this is not the last one.
