Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
mario calvo S mEIfXRzIk unsplash?width=719&height=464&fit=crop&auto=webp
mario calvo S mEIfXRzIk unsplash?width=398&height=256&fit=crop&auto=webp
/ Unsplash
Culture > News

What You Might Have Missed: The First All-Female Spacewalk Has (Finally) Happened

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at St Vincent chapter.

History has been made by two U.S. astronauts working for NASA. On Friday, October 18th, 2019, Dr. Jessica Meir and Ms. Christina Koch completed the first all-female spacewalk while replacing a power controller on the International Space Station. Their spacewalk lasted just over seven hours. While other female astronauts have conducted spacewalks before, they were always in the company of a male astronaut, making this event truly historic.

Image: NASA blog

 

Meet These Badass Women

Image: NASA blog

 

Christina Koch is an electrical engineer and physicist with degrees from North Carolina State University. She was chosen to be an astronaut in 2013 and is scheduled to break the record for the longest spaceflight by a woman by remaining in space for eleven months.

Image: NASA blog

 

Jessica Meir, Ph.D. received her bachelor’s in biology from Brown University and holds a master’s degree in space studies and a doctorate in marine biology. Like Koch, she was selected to be an astronaut in 2013. Prior to her career in space, she worked on research regarding the effects of living in space on the human body.

To watch Koch and Meir make history go here: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771224479/2-american-women-astronauts-venture-out-for-first-all-female-spacewalk

To read more about them and their work on the International Space Station check out this link: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/10/17/spacewalk-preps-today-amid-cancer-robotics-and-agriculture-research/

 

HCXO and support women in STEM,

Rachel