Peggy Whitson set to break Sunita Williams spacewalk record

Washington March 30 (IANS) Astronaut Peggy Whitson is set to surpass Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams record for the most spacewalks by a female astronaut when Whitson goes on her eighth spacewalk on Thursday NASA said.

Williams has spent a total of 322 days in space on two missions. With 50 hours and 40 minutes she also holds the record total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut.

Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson is set to go on her eighth spacewalk Thursday morning and surpass astronaut Suni Williams record for the most spacewalks by a female astronaut NASA scientists wrote on a blog post on Wednesday.

Whitson s last spacewalk was on January 6 with Commander Shane Kimbrough when she hooked up new lithium-ion batteries and inspected the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

Thursday s spacewalk will see Whitson and Kimbrough finish cable connections at the Pressurised Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3) just recently attached to the Harmony module s space-facing port the blog post said.

The PMA-3 relocation gets the station ready for the new International Docking Adapter-3 set to be delivered on a future SpaceX Dragon cargo mission.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet who conducted last week s spacewalk with Kimbrough will assist the duo in and out of their spacesuits and monitor the activities from inside the station.

--IANS
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