|
| Monday, February 05, 2007 |
| Sunita Williams sets spacewalking record for women |
Sunita Williams, the Indian-American astronaut, who is now spending her time in the International Space Station, has set a record – she has become the first woman to have spent the maximum time in spacewalking.
Sunita achieved the record by completing a total of over 22 hours in space on Sunday when she, along with International Space Station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, spacewalked for over seven hours.
Her record of 22 hours and 27 minutes includes her two most recent walks, as well as a spacewalk in December, 2006.
Sunita has broken the record hitherto held by former astronaut Kathy Thornton.
For Lopez-Algiers, it was the eighth spacewalk. He surpassed astronaut Steve Smith to climb to the third place on the all-time spacewalking list for most hours spent outside a spacecraft.
Sunday's spacewalk was the 79th for assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station and the 51st done without a shuttle present.
Sunita Williams and Lopez-Alegria on Sunday returned inside the outpost's Quest airlock and shut the outer hatch, then settling down to enjoy the spectacular Super Bowl football game between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts.
On Monday, Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams recharged batteries and prepared their spacesuits and tools for the next spacewalk set for Thursday morning.
This walk will be the most attempted in so short a period of time by any space station astronauts without the crew of a shuttle present to assist them.
At the conclusion of the third spacewalk from the Quest airlock on February 8 and a Russian spacewalk planned for February 22, Lopez-Alegria will have completed his 10th spacewalk – a record for any astronaut.
Sunita Williams will then have a total of four spacewalks, the most ever by a woman.
During their first two spacewalks, Sunita and Lopez-Alegria had disabled the station's six-year-old, temporary cooling system.
By disconnecting and reconnecting a series of eight tubes, they re-routed the flow of ammonia coolant into a permanent network of external radiators.
The spacewalkers shifted cooling for computers and flight control boxes in the space station's US science module to the permanent system on Monday.
During Wednesday's spacewalk, they had done the same for the space station's life support systems.Labels: Tech |
| posted by a correspondent @ 9:55 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
