Washington (AFP)
US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir flew together Friday from the International Space Station (ISS) to repair, marking the first time in sixty years of space history that two women are taking a spacewalk.
A first outing of two female astronauts, Christina Koch and Anne McClain, had been scheduled for March, but NASA had had to cancel it four days before, because they did not have two ready-made combinations of the right size.
Friday's release officially began at 11:38 GMT and is expected to last several hours, in order to change a battery charging unit that went down last weekend.
"Christina, you can get out of the airlock," Astronaut Stephanie Wilson announced from Houston's ground control center. Christina Koch was slowly floating out, followed by Jessica Meir, who arrived last month aboard the ISS.
"I'm moving ...", said the latter before going out in her turn.
March's heck had provoked a volley of criticism, Hillary Clinton tweeting a lapidary "Make another combination".
NASA had planned everything this time and the two women were out as planned in their bulky combinations, 400 km above the Earth, shooting in orbit at a speed of 8 kilometers per second.
Since the beginning of the ISS in 1998, 220 space sorties have been made by astronauts of all nationalities, mostly Americans. But only 13 Americans and one Russian had so far "walked" in a vacuum. Jessica Meir became the fifteenth.
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