The American astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch are set to venture outside the International Space Station on Friday to replace a power controller.
When two American astronauts venture out of the International Space Station to replace a power controller on Friday morning, it will be a highly anticipated milestone. The astronauts, Jessica Meir and Christina Koch, will have undertaken the first all-female spacewalk.
Such a walk was supposed to take place in March, but it was postponed because NASA did not have two appropriately sized spacesuits available. That sparked an outcry — and a "Saturday Night Live" spoof — about the legacy of sexism in the space program.
More recently, Ms. Meir and Ms. Koch had planned to install lithium-ion batteries on Oct. 21, but the timeline was hastened after a power controller failed last weekend. The controller, which regulates the batteries that distribute power to the station, had been in operation for 19 years and will be replaced. The agency said the failure had no impact on the crew's safety or continuing experiments.
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Ms. Meir and Ms. Koch, the astronauts on Friday's spacewalk, were both part of NASA's 2013 class of astronaut trainees. The eight-member class was the first to include equal numbers of men and women. (Mr. Hague and Ms. McClain were also part of that class.)
Ms. Meir grew up in Caribou, Me., according to her official NASA biography. She holds a master's degree from the International Space University, near Strasbourg, France, and a doctorate in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. She has researched human physiology for Lockheed Martin and worked as an aquanaut in an underwater habitat, among other posts.
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Ms. Koch, a Michigan native, grew up in Jacksonville, N.C., and most recently lived in Livingston, Mont., according to her official biography. She holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. Before becoming an astronaut, she worked in space science instrument development and remote scientific field engineering for NASA and the United States Antarctic Program, among other institutions.
She is on track to break the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with an expected 328 days in space if she returns to Earth in February, as scheduled. Friday's outing was to be her fourth spacewalk.
In an interview with NASA TV this month, Ms. Koch was asked if she was bothered that her accomplishments were often talked about in terms of her gender, or whether she believed it was important to mark milestones.
"That is something I've done a lot of thinking and reflecting on," she said. "And in the end, I do think it's important. And I think it's important because of the historical nature of what we're doing and that in the past women haven't always been at the table."
Ms. Koch said that it was "wonderful" to be a part of the space program at a time "when all contributions are being accepted, when everyone has a role, and that can lead in turn to an increased chance for success." She added that "it's an important aspect of the story to tell" because many people derive motivation from inspiring stories of people who look like them.
Ms. Meir sounded a similar note and credited the work of women who came before them. (She was scheduled to be the 15th woman to do a spacewalk, and all but one of her predecessors was American.)
"We don't really even think about it on a daily basis," she said of gender. "It's just normal. We're part of the team."
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You can watch the spacewalk live. More details here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/fridays-all-women-spacewalk-the-basics
