Yesterday morning the second all-female space walk in history took place at the International Space Station. The walk lasted for 7 hours and 29 minutes (video below).
This, the first space walk of 2020 was scheduled to exchange nickel-hydrogen batteries for new lithium-ion batteries in the solar arrays that generate power for the ISS.
Jessica Meir and Christina Koch were also part of the first ever all-female space walk which took place in October last year. That walk had initially been planned for March 2019, but it had to be canceled as suitable space suits were not available at that time.
Wednesday’s space walk was the 225th conducted at the International Space Station, according to NASA. ON Monday, another walk is scheduled in order to complete the battery replacement. These will be Meir’s second and third space walks and Koch’s fifth and sixth.
Yesterday’s space walk will allow NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and space station Commander Luca Parmitano from the European Space Agency, to finish installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s (AMS) new cooling apparatus and lines which was started in November. The spectrometer is used to search the universe for dark matter and antimatter.
