Astronaut makes history outside the ISS during six-hour repair 250 miles above Earth
Astronaut Sophie Adenot has become the first ever French woman to conduct a spacewalk out of the International Space Station (ISS).
This comes after NASA announced that astronauts aboard the ISS would be performing a spacewalk today (August 18) in order to swap out an antenna.
As of writing this, the six and a half hour spacewalk is currently underway, with NASA flight engineer Anil Menon and ESA (European Space Agency) flight engineer Sophie Adenot conducting the expedition.
And this is no ordinary spacewalk but instead a history-making event as Adenot has become the first French woman to do so.
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The event can be watched as it is being broadcast live down on Earth. The livestream can be viewed below:
The task is considered to be incredibly dangerous as so much could go wrong when faced with the hostile void that is open space.
As the astronauts leave the safety of the International Space Station (ISS), they have to be vigilant of the risks of debris, which is moving very quickly in the Earth’s orbit, as well as extreme temperatures and the possibility of suit failure.
Another worst case scenario is the risk of becoming separated from the ISS and drifting away.
Recent spacewalks have taken place on the ISS in order to maintain the structure as it approaches the end of its operations, with it expected to be brought down at the end of the decade.
A previous spacewalk took place earlier this month where Menon, along with station commander Jessica Meir, augmented the space station’s power system.
NASA explained: “Meir and Menon spent six hours and 27 minutes building a modification kit on the station’s Starboard 6 truss segment where a roll out solar array is slated to be installed later this year.
“The astronauts still had time for science on Monday and explored microgravity’s effect on physics, the human body, and more. Meir worked in the Destiny laboratory module and swapped physics research hardware for an investigation studying ways to manufacture semiconductor crystals and process metal alloys in weightlessness.”
Other history-making spacewalks outside of the ISS
This isn’t the first historic spacewalk as, back in 1984, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II shocked the world when he performed the first ever untethered spacewalk, using a jet-powered backpack called the Manned Maneuvering Unit to float freely in space.
At the time, he said: “It may have been one small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me.”
While no one has ever died while conducting a spacewalk, the risks are severe and NASA will often cancel an expedition last minute if the conditions aren’t favorable for the astronauts.