NASA Announces First All-Women Spacewalk Crew

NASA now has the first all–women spacewalk crew.

The agency’s March 29 spacewalk will be conducted by astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch, and will be led by flight director Mary Lawrence and EVA flight controller Jackie Kacey, making it the first spacewalk with an all-women crew.

McMain and Koch are both members of the 21st NASA Astronaut class that was selected in June 2013. McClain was a helicopter pilot in the army for 10 years and has logged more than 2,000 flight hours in 20 different aircrafts. Koch is an electrical engineer who helped create radiation-studying instrument for NASA’s Juno and Van Allen probes. Koch also spent 3.5 years researching in the Antarctic and Arctic. McClain flew to the ISS in December 2018. She’ll be joined by Koch on March 14, 2019.  

During the approximately seven-hour-long spacewalk, McClain and Koch will be upgrading batteries on the ISS.