A look at powerful women who will make the historic, first all-women spacewalk
Just as we celebrate International Women's Day, comes news that women are advancing further in space. NASA has announced that later this month, Astronauts Christina Hammock Koch and Anne McClain will be conducting the first all-female space walk.
McClain, who is already up at the International Space Station, spoke to journalists from space and said that she thinks the growing number of women in space could serve as an inspiration to girls, who she encouraged.
"No excuses," said the native of Spokane, Washington, "You can accomplish whatever you want to. You just have to throw your hat in the ring. You got to get out there and do it."
McClain, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, is a pilot, a Bronze Star recipient, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with dual master's degrees at the University of Bath and University of Bristol through the Marshall Scholarship and a competitive rugby player.
She is currently in space, in the third month of a planned six-and-a-half month mission on the international laboratory where she will be joined by Hammock Koch who launches on March 14th.
Hammock Koch is a physicist and engineer who has worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, at the U.S. Antarctic Program, at NOAA's Global Monitoring Division Baseline Observatory in Alaska and as the Station Chief of the American Samoa Observatory.
Both women astronauts were among 8 out of 6,100 selected from the Class of 2013, that had the second highest number of applicants ever.
In honor of International Women's Day, Hammock Koch, who considers North Carolina her home state, recently tweeted, "Thank you to all the women who have paved the way!"
The March 29th all-female spacewalk is one of a series of spacewalks scheduled to take place and is expected to last about seven hours. It comes 36 years after Sally Ride became the first American woman in space and 35 years after cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to participate in a spacewalk.
According to NASA, about 60 women have flown in space, the overwhelming majority have been Americans.
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