Two women astronauts of NASA completed the first all-woman spacewalk, literally claiming the gender space
In a small step for two women but a giant leap for womankind, two female astronauts from the US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) completed the first all-woman spacewalk on Friday. It was a moment frozen in the history of women empowerment as the two US astronauts, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, floated out, feet-first, of the International Space Station’s (ISS) Quest airlock, tasked with replacing a failed power control unit. During the spacewalk, the coordinator on the ground was also a woman, astronaut Stephanie Wilson. In a test of endurance and grit of the two women, the spacewalk went on for six hours and 45 minutes, something which has so far been considered a male privilege and equal to his stamina. The figures say it all. Till now, only 14 women have done spacewalks compared to 213 men. The first woman to break the glass ceiling was Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, who went outside the USSR’s Salyut 7 in 1984. Meir became the 15th woman overall and 14th US woman to spacewalk.
How male-oriented NASA and other space programmes of the world are can be gauged by the fact that this spacewalk was to take place in March but had to be postponed as there was only one medium-sized spacesuit available at the ISS. As Christina Koch so aptly put it in an interview, “In the past women haven’t always been at the table.” This sentiment finds resonance with millions of women on Earth, who struggle to make their voices heard in male-dominated spheres and face discrimination and derision on a daily basis. The 40-year-old Koch is also setting another milestone as she will remain on the ISS until February, bringing her total time in space to 328 days, the longest single spaceflight by a woman and just short of astronaut Scott Kelly’s 340-day record. Till now, most of the bio-medical data on the impact of spaceflights is derived from male astronauts. Researchers are collecting extensive data about the impact on Koch’s body for the first time. The first all-woman spacewalk is also evidence of NASA’s own journey of empowerment. According to the space agency, this was something it had not planned but happened because there has been a marked increase in the number and aspiration of women astronauts. This is the same agency which did not admit women into the astronaut programme until 1978. Sally Ride went to space in 1983 but she was beaten to it by two Soviet women. Similarly, it was only in October 1984 that Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to finish a spacewalk. Now, the agency is planning to put the first woman on the Moon by 2024 with its Artemis lunar exploration programme and recently unveiled the prototype for a new spacesuit. That is a big step towards gender equality everywhere though it has taken a long time coming.