SAN DIEGO UC San Diego graduate Jessica Meir and fellow astronaut Christina Koch made history before most people woke up Friday, becoming the first all-female team of astronauts to perform a spacewalk.
Meir and Koch floated out of the International Space Station for a roughly 5.5 hour mission to repair a power unit that recently broke.
Within minutes, they set to work, attached to the exterior of space station, which is streaking around earth at a speed of 5 miles per second.
The spacewalk was broadcast live at NASA.gov.
Koch left the station first and was quickly followed by the 42-year-old Meir, who was carrying a tool bag. She was soon working from P6, a large part of the super structure. A ground controller warned her to be careful of sharp edges.
Koch was working from a robotic arm controlled from inside the space station, which is in orbit roughly 254 miles above Earth.
Meir, who earned her doctorate at UC San Diegos Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is making her first spacewalk. Koch is making her fourth.
Meir flew to the space station in late September to carry out a six-month mission, most of which will be spent on scientific research.
