Indian-origin Sunita Williams undertakes spacewalk after 12 years

New Delhi, Jan 16 Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams on Thursday stepped out of the International Space Station (ISS) for a spacewalk along with colleague Nick Hague, the US space agency said.

This is Williams' first spacewalk in 12 years, and the eighth in her career, while it's Hague's fourth. The mission designated US Spacewalk 91, is expected to last around six and a half hours.

Hague serves as spacewalk crew member 1 and is wearing a suit with red stripes. Williams is serving as spacewalk crew member 2 and is wearing an unmarked suit.

The astronaut-duo is currently working to perform maintenance tasks and replace hardware, NASA said.

“NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams, step outside of the Space_Station to support station upgrades, including repairs to our NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray telescope.

In a blog post, NASA informed that Williams and Hague will work to replace a rate gyro assembly that helps provide orientation control for the station and install patches to cover damaged areas of light filters for NICER. They will also replace a reflector device used for navigational data on one of the international docking adapters.

In addition, the pair will check access areas and connector tools that will be used for future maintenance work on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

NASA also informed a second spacewalk, scheduled to begin at 8:15 a.m. on January 23.

During the second mission, Wilmore and Williams will remove a radio frequency group antenna assembly from the station’s truss, and collect samples of surface material for analysis from the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock to see whether microorganisms may exist on the exterior of the orbital complex.

They will also prepare a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2 robotic arm in the event it is needed for a replacement.

Meanwhile, NASA has yet again delayed the mission to return Williams and Willmore to Earth, as the launch of SpaceX Crew 10 has been delayed to late March 2025.

Williams and Willmore became the first to ride the Starliner, developed by Boeing. What began as an eight-day sojourn on the International Space Station (ISS) has extended to 10 months now in space for the astronauts, while the faulty Starliner, declared unfit for human travel by NASA, is back on Earth unharmed.

The astronauts were scheduled to return to Earth onboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February 2025.

However, NASA opted to delay Crew 10 to allow additional preparation time for the new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, to enhance the safety of the astronauts.

Recently, Williams noted that she “wants to go home because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here”.