More like “one small step for woman,” imo.
The first all-female space walk is happening today.
Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will become the first women to leave the International Space Station without the company of a male counterpart.
This is the first time that this has ever happened in the history of space travel.
According to The Verge, out of the 227 people who have left their space craft to engage in some sort of space walk, only 14 have been women.
Koch and Meir will leave the Space Station together today to replace a faulty battery charger in the lab’s solar power system.
Christina Koch
“What we’re doing now shows all of the work that went in for the decades prior, all of the women that worked to get us where we are today,” said Meir ahead of the walk.
This comes after NASA’s first scheduled all-female space walk was cancelled earlier this year.
Koch and fellow astronaut Anne McClain were due to leave the Station together, only for the latter to replaced by male colleague Nick Hague when it became apparent that there was only one medium sized space suit available.
Astronaut Kathy Sullivan, who was the first US woman to space walk in 1984, told CBS News that today’s walk is testament to the growing numbers of women in leadership roles in the industry.
Jessica Meir
“It’s a sign of the slowly growing number of women in the astronaut corps,” she said.
“The occasional woman as a bit of a novelty on a crew or a spacewalk or on a mission control console is giving way to the normalcy of more gender diverse teams in all these arenas and women regularly taking on high-stakes tasks and leadership roles.”
Koch and Meir’s space walk is expected to last 6.5 hours.
You can check out a live-stream of the event over on CBS News here.
