All-female spacewalking team makes history
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The world's first all-female spacewalking team made history high above Earth on Friday, replacing a broken part of the International Space Station's power grid.
As NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir successfully completed the job with wrenches, screwdrivers and power-grip tools, it marked the first time in a half-century of spacewalking that men weren't part of the action. They insisted they were just doing their job after years of training, following in the footsteps of women who paved the way.
America's first female spacewalker from 35 years ago, Kathy Sullivan, was delighted.
She said it' s good to finally have enough women in the astronaut corps and trained for spacewalking for this to happen.
“We' ve got qua lified women running the control, running space centers, commanding the station, commanding spaceships and doing space walks ,” Sullivan
told The Associated Press earlier this week. “And golly, gee whiz, every now and then there' s more than one woman in the same place.”
President Donald Trump put in a congratulatory call from the White House to mark“this historic event ... truly historic.”
“What you do is incredible. You're very brave people,” Trump told them as they wrapped up their spacewalk.
Replied Me ir :“We don't want to take too much credit because there have been many others — female spacewalkers — before us. This is just the first time that there have been two women outside at the same time ... For us, this is really just us doing our job.”
NASA leaders, Girl Scouts and others also cheered Koch and Meir on. Parents also sent in messages of thanks and encouragement via social media.
NASA included some in its TV coverage. “Go girls go ,” two young sisters wrote on a sign in crayon. A group of middle schoolers held a long sign reading “The sky is not the limit!!”