Female spacewalking team makes history
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(18 Oct 2019) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4235517
The world's first female spacewalking team made history high above Earth on Friday, floating out of the International Space Station to fix a broken part of the power network.
As NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir emerged one by one, it marked the first time in a half-century of spacewalking that a woman floated out without a male crewmate.
NASA originally wanted to conduct an all-female spacewalk last spring, but did not have enough medium-size suits ready to go.
Koch and Meir were supposed to install more new batteries in a spacewalk next week, but had to venture out three days earlier to deal with an equipment failure that occurred over the weekend.
They need to replace an old battery charger for one of the three new batteries that was installed last week by Koch and Andrew Morgan.
Meir, making her spacewalking debut, became the 228th person in the world to conduct a spacewalk and the 15th woman.
It was the fourth spacewalk for Koch, who is seven months into an 11-month mission that will be the longest ever by a woman.
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