Sunita Williams sets another record, accomplishes spacewalk of over eight hours

01 September, 2012

According to NASA, astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide have completed an over eight hour long record spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS). Further, Williams also holds the record of the longest space flight of 195 days achieved by any woman astronaut.

SUNITA WILLIAMS, an Indian-American who is currently working as a NASA Flight Engineer, along with Hoshide, spent eight hours and 17 minutes in outer space. They were accomplishing the task of maintenance of the space station.

Earlier, in 2001, the first record spacewalk of 8 hours and 56 minutes was undertaken by US astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss.

NASA has informed that Williams and Hoshide, however, could not accomplished the task of installing a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the ISS as they had difficulties driving the bolts to secure the equipment.

Sunita is the second Indian-American woman member NASA's space missions after Kalpna Chawla. She holds four records as a woman astronaut, namely, longest spaceflight, largest number of space walks biggest total time spent on space walks, and the longest space walk.