Sunita Williams sets record for total spacewalking by a woman

Sunita Williams during the space walk. PIC/NASA

Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams has broken the record for total spacewalking time by a woman by logging 62 hours and 6 minutes of spacewalk. She surpassed former astronaut Peggy Whitson's total spacewalking time of 60 hours and 21 minutes.

Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024, conducted a spacewalk on Thursday. The duo ventured outside the ISS to remove degraded radio communications hardware and collect samples that may show whether microorganisms exist on the exterior of the orbiting laboratory.

The spacewalk began at 7.43 am Eastern Time (ET) and concluded at 1.09 pm ET, lasting 5 hours and 26 minutes. It was the ninth spacewalk for Williams and the fifth for Wilmore.In 2012, during a trip to the ISS, Williams became the first person to finish a triathlon in space, during which she simulated swimming using a weight-lifting machine and ran on a treadmill while strapped in by a harness so she wouldn't float away.

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