Historic all-female spacewalk a milestone for NASA
This article, Historic all-female spacewalk a milestone for NASA, originally appeared on CBSNews.com
Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir carried out history's Friday, floating outside the International Space Station and successfully installing a 230-pound replacement battery charger in the lab's solar power system. The historic excursion was carried out in a blaze of public interest that rose all the way to the White House.
"I just want to congratulate you, what you do is incredible," President Trump told the spacewalkers in a surprise call from the White House. He was joined by Vice President Mike Pence, daughter Ivanka and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
"You're very brave people, I don't think I want to do it, I must tell you that," the president said. "But you are amazing people. ... Congratulations, Christina and Jessica, on this historic event, this is truly historic."
"Thank you," Meir replied from orbit. "We don't want to take too much credit because there have been many other female spacewalkers before us. This is just the first time there have been two women outside at the same time. ... For us, this is really just us doing our job.
"At the same time, we recognize that it is an historic achievement and we do, of course, want to give credit to all those who came before us. There has been a long line of female scientists, explorers, engineers and astronauts, we are following in their footsteps to get us where we are today."
The spacewalk began at 7:38 a.m. EDT when Koch, making her fourth excursion, and Meir, making her first, switched their spacesuits to battery power inside the Quest airlock, kicking off 221st station spacewalk since assembly began in 1998. It was the first by two women in the 54 years since the first "extra-vehicular activity," or EVA, by a in 1965, sparking widespread public interest.
While the remaining battery installation spacewalks were put on hold, NASA managers opted to keep the Koch-Meir pairing intact, assigning them instead to the BCDU change out.
"One of these days, working in space like that is going to be routine," said former astronaut Ken Bowersox, now deputy chief of NASA's human space program. "We won't get together to celebrate an occasion when two women, or two men, or a man and a woman, or three or four go outside, it'll just be routine.
"That's what we're doing on ISS, we're gathering that experience that we need to make spaceflight routine so we can move farther out into our solar system, to go to the moon and on to Mars someday. That's what excites me the most, to see that progress happening."
The mission of this spacewalk
The station's electricity is provided by four huge solar wings, two on each end of a truss that stretches the length of a football field. Two dozen battery charge controllers, six per solar wing, divert electricity to powerful batteries for recharging when the lab is in sunlight and then deliver that stored power when the station moves through Earth's shadow.
Replacing the faulty BCDU was expected to restore 4 to 5 kilowatts of power to the lab's electrical system that was lost when the original charger failed after 19 years of normal operation, knocking a newly-installed lithium-ion battery off line.
How Biden supporters reacted to this week's debate
El Chapo's son captured, then released during shootout in Mexico
Michael Jordan opens clinic to serve underprivileged families
