NASA Nixes 1st All-Female Spacewalk
By AP. Astronaut Anne McClain was supposed to float out of the International Space Station this Friday with newly arrived Christina Koch, to replace old batteries. But McClain pulled herself from the lineup because there’s not enough time to get two medium suits ready for them. Koch will go out with a male crewmate, Nick Hague.
NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said Tuesday that McClain trained before flight in both medium and large spacesuits. She wore a medium when she went out on her first spacewalk last Friday and was supposed to switch to a large this week. But after last week’s spacewalk, she decided that a large would be too big. . .
In 54 years of spacewalking, women have only gone outside with men. That’s because men have always outnumbered women in space. As women continue to make up a greater percentage of the astronaut corps, more gender records will be set and not just in spacewalking, Dean noted. (Read more from “NASA Nixes 1st All-Female Spacewalk” HERE)
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NASA Explains Why It Didn’t Have Enough Space Suits for an All-Female Spacewalk
By BGR. This was supposed to be a history-making week for NASA, with the first all-female spacewalk originally planned to take place on Friday. Unfortunately, a last-second swap has led to one of the expected participants, Anne McClain, being replaced with fellow ISS inhabitant Nick Hague.
NASA’s explanation was that McClain wouldn’t have a space suit available to her for the spacewalk due to sizing, since Christina Koch will be wearing the medium-sized suit that McClain wore during her previous spacewalk last week. This left a lot of people scratching their heads. After all, NASA says there’s two of every size of space suit on board the ISS, so why can’t both McClain and Koch wear the same sized suits? Speaking with CNN, NASA representatives offered a deeper explanation. . .
NASA has two of each size of space suit on the ISS, but only one of them is fully outfitted and ready to use at any given time. The other suits, which are considered backups, can’t be pulled out and used immediately, and they must be prepped for use in space. . .
Training in various space suits on Earth can’t adequately predict what suit will fit you better in space, and in this case the time crunch between the two spacewalks has forced NASA to replace McClain with Hague. It’s obviously a bummer for McClain, but nobody wants to be floating around in space in a suit that doesn’t fit. (Read more from “NASA Explains Why It Didn’t Have Enough Space Suits for an All-Female Spacewalk” HERE)
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