Daily Weird News Report
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot are scheduled to make history on Sept. 1 with the sixth spacewalk involving an all-female crew.
The pair are expected to exit the International Space Station at about 8:30 a.m. EDT, or 12:30 p.m. GMT. NASA coverage is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. EDT, with the event available through NASA and Space.com. The spacewalk is expected to last approximately 6.5 hours.
Their first task will be replacing a retroreflector on the forward port of the station’s Harmony module. NASA says the device will support spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking operations.
The astronauts are also scheduled to install jumper cables for data-relay systems, prepare the radiator on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for future maintenance, and replace a high-definition camera on the station’s truss. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is an experiment mounted outside the ISS that studies cosmic rays and searches for evidence related to dark matter.
Adenot will serve as crew member 1 and wear a spacesuit marked with red stripes. Meir will be crew member 2 and wear an unmarked suit, according to NASA officials cited by Space.com.
For Adenot, the planned excursion would be her third spacewalk. Two weeks earlier, she became the first French woman to perform an extravehicular activity, Space.com reported. The planned event would be Meir’s seventh spacewalk, placing her third among female NASA astronauts by total spacewalks, behind Peggy Whitson with 10 and Suni Williams with nine.
Meir has already participated in three all-female spacewalks—the first three ever recorded. She completed those excursions with NASA astronaut Christina Koch on Oct. 18, 2019, Jan. 15, 2020, and Jan. 20, 2020.
If completed as scheduled, Meir and Adenot’s outing would bring the total number of all-female International Space Station spacewalks to six.
