First all-female spacewalk

The first spacewalk to be performed by an all-female team took place on 18 October 2019. It was carried out by NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch (both USA) on the International Space Station. The spacewalk began at 11:32 and finished 7 hours and 23 minutes later at 18:55 (times UTC).

Although the first woman in space – Valentina Tereshkova – made her first flight more than 56 years earlier, women continued to make up only a small proportion of the roster of active astronauts until recently. Currently 12 of NASA's 38 active astronauts are women, but as the two most recent astronaut groups (selected in 2013 and 2017) have had a more or less equal gender split, this ratio will begin to shift in the next few years.

NASA first scheduled a spacewalk with two women astronauts for 29 March 2019. The spacewalk (officially designated Expedition 59 EVA 2) was to have been undertaken by Anne McClain and Christina Koch. However, as the date of the spacewalk approached, Anne McClain discovered that the "large" size spacesuit she'd trained with on Earth was much harder to handle in space. As there was only one functional medium-size spacesuit on the station, McClain ceded her position on the roster to Nick Hague.

This shortage of suitably sized spacesuits is one of the main reasons why this milestone was not broken earlier in the ISS's lifetime. The EVA suits NASA uses were designed in the 1970s, and were supposed to come in a full range of sizes (from extra small to extra large). Budget constraints led to only medium and large variants being completed, however, and the medium size is still too large for many female astronauts.

NASA sent up a newly refurbished medium-size spacesuit (number 3004) over the summer. It is this new spacesuit that Meir was wearing during the historic EVA.