Cabo Cañaveral, Florida – An astronaut who lost the first exclusively feminine space walk due to a problem with the size of the suit had his chance on Thursday, six years later.
NASA Anne McClain He left the International Space Station with Nichole Ayers. Both military officers and pilots traveled in March to the laboratory in orbit to replace the two NASA astronauts who had been stranded and who are now back at home.
Minutes before leaving floating, McClain noticed threads on the index finger of his right glove. The mission control briefly delayed the beginning of the space walk to ensure that your glove was safe.
During their activity, the couple will prepare the space station to place a new set of solar panels and move an antenna in the complex, located 420 kilometers (260 miles) high.
The space station had to be elevated to a slightly higher orbit on Wednesday to avoid the presence of space garbage: part of a Chinese rocket of 20 years of age.
McClain, Army Colonel and helicopter pilot, should have participated in the first exclusively female space walk in 2019, but there were not enough medium -sized suits. The first one of that type only of women was made by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. The most recent was the fifth exclusively female space walk in 60 years.
Koch will soon become the first woman to fly to the moon. She and three male astronauts will fly around the moon without landing next year within the NASA Artemis program, the successor of Apollo.
Men still exceed women in NASA’s body of astronauts.
Of NASA’s 47 active astronauts, 20 are women. And of the seven astronauts who currently live in the space station, McClain and Ayers are the only women. This was the first space walk for Ayers, major of the Air Force and combat expilot, and the third for McClain.