All-Female Spacewalk: Astronauts Swap ISS Docking Reflector and Camera in Historic EVA

The all-female spacewalk on Sept. 1 marked the sixth such EVA in history, as NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot worked outside the International Space Station to replace a docking‑aid retroreflector and a high‑definition camera.

All‑Female Spacewalk Milestones

Beginning at 8:40 a.m. EDT from the Quest airlock, the crew first removed the worn planar deflector on Harmony Node 2, a component that guides visiting spacecraft during rendezvous. The new retroreflector, free of thruster residue, was installed to restore precise navigation. “And it’s off!” Meir announced after freeing the obsolete camera assembly, earning a brief applause from Mission Control. The spent unit was swapped for a spare, restoring visual monitoring of the truss. Meanwhile, Adenot conducted a swab‑sampling study of the airlock exterior and her gloves, searching for microbial traces. Meir then rode the Canadarm2 to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, torquing ↑46 bolts in preparation for future detector maintenance and relocating power‑thermal jumper cables and a portable foot restraint. Near the EVA’s end, Adenot reported a loss of mobility in her left shoulder; Mission Control ordered a pause. Meir inspected the extravehicular mobility unit, uncovering a snag between the shoulder MLI and a rotation joint, and freed the cable, restoring movement.

“I think it was where the cable got caught in between the shoulder MLI and the rotation joint,” Meir reported.

The pair returned to the airlock at 4:29 p.m. EDT, concluding a ↑6h 49m EVA. This was Meir’s seventh spacewalk, bringing her total to ↑49h 22m EVA time, placing her third among NASA’s women astronauts behind Peggy Whitson and Sunita Williams. Adenot logged her third EVA, totaling 19 h 42 m in vacuum. The mission, the 284th ISS assembly‑maintenance EVA, underscores the growing role of women in orbital operations. For broader context see Reuters and AP News.

Reported by Nova Stirling (Aerospace & Space Tech Correspondent).