NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history Friday morning when they completed the first all-female spacewalk. Koch and Meir stepped out of the International Space Station, over 250 miles above Earth, at 7:38 a.m. ET. Even though the walk itself was historic, its purpose was fairly routine—they needed to swap some faulty batteries. According to The New York Times, the mission lasted seven hours and 17 minutes. President Trump also spoke with the astronauts around 12:30 p.m. ET, calling them “brave, brilliant women.” “Our country is very proud of you,” the president said, to which Meir replied that they were “really just us doing our jobs.”
It follows the cancellation of the first attempt at an all-female spacewalk in March, which was called off because they didn’t have the correctly-sized spacesuits. Koch is on course to complete the longest single space flight by a woman by remaining in orbit until February. She said earlier this month: “There are a lot of people who derive motivation from inspiring stories from people who look like them, and I think that it’s an important aspect of the story to tell.”
