US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir were the first women to make a spacewalk on Friday, a historic milestone as NASA prepared to send the first woman to the moon.
The mission was originally scheduled for the beginning of this year, but had to be canceled because of lack of suitable spacesuits, which led to allegations of sexism.
"Christina, you can leave the airlock," said the spacecraft communicator, Stephanie Wilson, as the couple set off to replace a performance controller on the International Space Station at 1138 GMT.
They began their mission with standard security checks on their suits and ribbons before heading to the repair site on the port side of the station as the sunlit earth came into view.
A few minutes earlier, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had highlighted the symbolic meaning of the day in a call to reporters.
"We want to make sure that everyone has room, and this is another milestone in this development," he said.
"I have an 11-year-old daughter, I want her to give herself all the opportunities I had as a child."
- Suit Flub -
The first all-female spacewalk was to take place in March, but was canceled because the space agency had only a medium-sized suit and a combination of men and women performed the required task at a later date.
The failure of traditionally male-dominated NASA to be adequately prepared has been denounced in some areas as evidence of implicit sexism.
When they were outside the space station for about five hours, President Donald Trump caught the astronauts in a video call and told them they had made history.
"They are very brave, brilliant women," said Trump Koch and Meir.
"They represent this country so well," the president added. "We are very proud of you."
Koch, an electrical engineer in charge of the mission, performs her fourth spacewalk and was connected to the station's robotic arm.
The PhD marine biologist, who is making her first spacewalk, was careful with handles.
The two worked to replace a faulty charging / discharging unit, a so-called BCDU.
The station relies on solar energy, but does not have direct sunlight for most of its orbit and therefore needs batteries. The BCDUs regulate the amount of charge that flows into them.
The current task was announced on Monday and is part of a broader mission to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with higher capacity lithium-ion units.
- Artemis -
The US sent its first female astronaut into space in 1983, when Sally Ride took part in the seventh Space Shuttle mission. By now they had more female astronauts than any other country.
However, the first woman in space was the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (1963), followed by compatriot Svetlana Savitskaya (1982), who was also the first female space-skier two years later.
Ken Bowersox, NASA Deputy Administrator, said he hopes that a purely female spacewalk will soon be a "routine" that requires no celebration.
When asked why it took so long - Meir is the 14th Spacewalker in the US - he said the men's extra height was an advantage. "There were many spacewalks where very tall men did the work because they could do things a little easier and get done," he said.
"But we also got women into the crew because they are right with their brains, they come in and they bring different skills, they think about things in different ways."
"And by using their brains, they can handle many of these physical challenges."
NASA plans to return to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo landings from 1969 - 1972 until 2024. The new mission is called Artemis, after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology.
The mission sees the first woman setting foot on the lunar surface, probably as part of a male-female combination, while the space agency looks at a crewed Mars expedition in the 2030s.
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