Two hundred and fifty miles above Earth, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot spent about six and a half hours outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, swapping out a navigation mirror, replacing a camera, and prepping cables for future repairs. It was only the sixth all-female spacewalk in the history of human spaceflight, and it capped an unusually packed month of orbital maintenance for the Expedition 75 crew.
The excursion began around 8:35 a.m. ET, with NASA airing live coverage starting at 7 a.m. ET, according to FOX 35 Orlando. Meir wore an unmarked spacesuit while Adenot's suit was marked with red stripes, helping ground teams and viewers distinguish the two spacewalkers as they worked along the station's exterior. NASA officially logged the outing as U.S. Spacewalk 99 — the 284th spacewalk devoted to assembling, maintaining, and upgrading the station since orbital construction began in 1998, per NASA's own mission blog.
A Packed Checklist Outside the Station
The primary task was replacing the optical retroreflector on the Harmony module's forward port, a mirror-like device that guides docking spacecraft such as Crew Dragons. Over time, the reflector accumulates residue from approaching vehicles' rocket engines, which can degrade the navigation sensors that rely on it, according to Cité de l'espace. The crew also replaced a high-definition camera on the station's truss, installed jumper cables for the station's data-relay systems, and began preparing the radiator on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for future maintenance work, NASA said.
Inside the station, flight engineer Anil Menon operated the 17-meter Canadarm2 robotic arm to maneuver Meir along the starboard truss, while astronaut Jack Hathaway monitored safety from inside as Adenot translated independently along the station's handrails and tethers, per NASA's account of the spacewalk. That kind of choreography — robotic arm, safety officer, and two spacewalkers moving in tandem — is standard for the intricate maintenance work required to keep the aging station's systems functioning.
The Sixth All-Female Spacewalk, and Meir's Seventh
Tuesday's excursion was Meir's seventh spacewalk and Adenot's third, and it made history as just the sixth all-female spacewalk ever conducted. Meir has now been part of three of those five prior all-female excursions, including the first one ever, alongside NASA astronaut Christina Koch on Oct. 18, 2019, a milestone Space.com notes she and Koch followed up with two more all-female spacewalks together in January 2020. With seven career spacewalks now completed, Meir ranks third all-time among female NASA astronauts for cumulative spacewalks, trailing only Peggy Whitson's 10 and Suni Williams' nine, the outlet reports.
Adenot's own path to Tuesday's spacewalk has moved quickly. A colonel and former helicopter test pilot in the French Air and Space Force, she became the first French woman and only the second European woman to conduct a spacewalk during an excursion on Aug. 18, according to FRANCE 24. Selected by the European Space Agency in 2022 from a pool of more than 22,000 applicants, Adenot launched to the station on Feb. 13 aboard SpaceX Crew-12 for her debut long-duration mission, named εpsilon, per the European Space Agency.
A Demanding Month for Expedition 75
Tuesday marked the fourth time the Expedition 75 crew had ventured outside the station within a single month, following earlier maintenance spacewalks on Aug. 6, Aug. 18, and Aug. 25, according to NASA. The pace wasn't without complications: an Aug. 6 spacewalk was disrupted when a carbon dioxide sensor on astronaut Anil Menon's spacesuit returned anomalous readings, prompting ground engineers to run suit evaluations before clearing later excursions to proceed, NASA said. Readings normalized once the suit was removed, but the incident underscored how closely environmental monitoring dictates spacewalk timing and safety.
Before her astronaut career, Meir earned a Ph.D. in marine biology, researched human flight physiology for Lockheed Martin, and served as an aquanaut on NASA's underwater NEEMO mission off the coast of Florida — a program that simulates spaceflight conditions underwater to test operational protocols, according to NASA's astronaut fact book. That scientific grounding has followed her into orbit, where she now commands Expedition 75 while continuing to rack up spacewalking hours alongside a new generation of international crewmates like Adenot.
NASA streamed the spacewalk live on its YouTube channel, giving viewers on the ground a rare real-time look at the kind of routine-yet-critical repair work that keeps the station's systems — and the spacecraft that dock with it — running safely.
