In the early hours of Friday, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch make the first exclusively female spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The spacewalk will begin at 7:50 am ET and will last about five or six hours.
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To distinguish astronauts, the views of Koch's helmet camera will be number 18 and those of Meir will be number 11. Koch's space suit also has red stripes.
This will be the fourth spacewalk for Koch and the first for Meir.
The first woman to do a spacewalk was the Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya in 1984, closely followed by NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan. Another 12 American women have made 40 spacewalks in the last 35 years. Koch and Meir will be women number 13 and 14, respectively, in doing the walk.
Koch and Meir talked about women working on human spaceflight during a recent press conference.
"I think it is important because of the historical nature of what we are doing and that in the past, women have not always been at the table," Koch said. "It's wonderful to be contributing to human spaceflight at a time when all contributions are accepted, when everyone has a role and that can lead, in turn, to a greater chance of success."
"There are many people who get motivation from inspiring stories of people who look like them and I think it is an important aspect of the story to tell," Koch said.
“What we are doing now shows all the work done during the previous decades, all the women who worked to take us where we are today,” added Meir. “I think the good thing for us is that we don't even think about it on a daily basis, it's normal. We are part of the team, we are doing this work as an efficient team working together with everyone else, so it is really nice to see how far we have come. ”
