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Sunita Williams creates record with spacewalk

Last updated on: September 6, 2012 10:02 IST
ISS Expedition 32 flight engineers Sunita Williams of NASA and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency perform a spacewalk to complete an equipment installation outside the International Space Station in this NASA video image captured on September 5

Indian-American National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut Sunita Williams and her Japanese counterpart Akihiko Hoshide have successfully restored power to the International Space Station on their second attempt.

With this spacewalk, Williams surpassed Peggy Whitson's record during Wednesday's excursion for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut.

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Sunita Williams creates record with spacewalk

Last updated on: September 6, 2012 10:02 IST
ISS Expedition 32 flight engineers Sunita Williams of NASA and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency perform a spacewalk to complete an equipment installation outside the International Space Station in this NASA video image captured on September 5

Whitson worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks. Williams has conducted six spacewalks for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes.

Peggy Whitson sent up congratulations, saying, "You go, girl!"  Williams replied: "Anybody could be in these boots."

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Sunita Williams creates record with spacewalk

Last updated on: September 6, 2012 10:02 IST
NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams (L) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide take part in a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on August 30

The astronauts had to go into space for the second time in less than a week. The spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes.

Williams and Hoshide have finally completed repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism, the repairing of which ran into problems earlier this week.

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Sunita Williams creates record with spacewalk

Last updated on: September 6, 2012 10:02 IST
NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams (L) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide take part in a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on August 30

As a result of the faults in the system, the astronauts had to save energy by turning off part of the solar cells and de-energised some compartments of the station.

This was the second attempt to correct the problem.

Last Thursday, Williams and Hoside were in space for more than eight hours, but failed to fix the unit and attach it correctly to the ISS.

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