As part of Expedition 59, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch will carry out the spacewalk on March 29. They'll be supported on the ground by Canadian Space Agency flight controller Kristen Facciol, who will be on the console at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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"It was not orchestrated to be this way; these spacewalks were originally scheduled to take place in the fall," Schierholz added. "In addition to the two female spacewalkers, the Lead Flight Director is Mary Lawrence, and Jackie Kagey (also a woman), is the lead EVA (spacewalk) flight controller."
The NASA website shows the spacewalk will last about seven hours.
Both McClain and Koch were part of the 2013 astronaut class, half of which were women, and came from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received -- more than 6,100. The most recent class of flight directors was also 50% women, NASA said.
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McClain is currently on the ISS as part of Expedition 58, while Koch is set to blast off on March 14 to reach the station for Expedition 59 and 60 along with Cmdr. Alexey Ovchinin and Flight Engineer Nick Hague. This is going to be the first time in space for McClain and the first spaceflight for Koch.
Spacewalks are held for a number of different reasons, according to NASA, including doing work outside a spacecraft, conducting science experiments and testing new equipment. Astronauts also conduct spacewalks to fix satellites or spacecraft that are already in space, instead of having them brought back to Earth to fix.