U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams has now spent more time in space than any other woman, setting the record on Sunday as she and a crew mate upgraded the international space station's cooling system.
Williams broke the previous female spacewalking record of more than 21 hours when she and Michael Lopez-Alegria completed the second of what could be a precedent-setting three spacewalks in nine days.
The new record is 22 hours and 27 minutes.
During the spacewalk, which lasted more than seven hours, small amounts of toxic ammonia leaked from a fluid line.
The liquid ammonia, which freezes into flakes when it hits the vacuum of space, did not appear to touch either astronaut.
Mission Control told them to continue their task of hooking up ammonia fluid lines from a temporary cooling system to a permanent one.
Once they were back in the space station's airlock, Mission Control made the astronauts test for contamination. The test was negative.
A tiny bit of ammonia also leaked during Lopez-Alegria's and Williams' first spacewalk Wednesday. Mission Control ordered them to take precautions since ammonia could cause respiratory problems for the three-person crew if enough of it got into the space station.
2 comments:
Yayy Wimmins!!
The space walk was only meant to last 3 minutes , but she saw a nice pair of moonboots she wanted to try on .... 22hours later ...
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