by NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara was prepared for her first spacewalk – but not for the view.
O’Hara, along with NASA SpaceX Crew-7 astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, made the fourth all-female spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) on November 1, 2023. They spent 6 hours and 42 minutes performing station maintenance, as for example replacing bearings to keep the solar arrays moving.
It was a success, and O’Hara shared with reporters at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a success she attributed to hours of training with her astronaut partner. And, she prayed, being inside a space suit was an exciting experience.
“Nothing compares to the feeling of stepping outside, being in your own spacesuit looking at Earth, right through your helmet bubble,” O’Hara told Space.com during a live-streamed statement today (April 15). “It’s one thing when you’re looking through the window, looking at the Earth … but then suddenly you’re just immersed in the environment, and you’re hanging there [with] the Earth moving under your feet.”
Related: NASA astronauts complete the 4th all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station
NASA’s space-suited Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU, was designed in the 1970s when only men were flying into space. So the spacesuits were made in a way that favors bigger and stronger bodies, making it harder for women (or smaller bodies) to work in the suit.
The newer generation of spacesuits (of which there are many designs, made by private contractors for the ISS and future Artemis program moon missions) will be more friendly to different body sizes. But, in the meantime, NASA achieved its first all-female spacewalk with EMUs in October 2019 with Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, and it aims to continue.
Related: This month’s rare female spacewalk won’t be the last, NASA says
Although O’Hara was one of the lucky few to see Earth through a spacesuit, she did not miss one rare planetary sight in space: a total solar eclipse that passed over parts of the United States, Canada and Mexico on April 8 and was. witnessed by space station astronauts as well.
Although he was back on Earth by then, O’Hara did not see totality in person due to a slight landing delay that caused her to return to JSC from her landing zone in Kazakhstan. She originally planned to leave Houston, under a partial eclipse, to watch the full show elsewhere. Instead, however, she stood outside JSC to watch the partial eclipse take place.
“I know they got a good show on the space station,” O’Hara said in response to a Space.com question, adding that she regretted not seeing the eclipse a little. That said, the sun was evident in other ways while it was in space; Auroras were a regular sight triggered by high solar activity.
“We got a lot of good auroras during our mission… that was especially beautiful, but watching a space station kind of fly through the aurora is one of my favorite things.”
O’Hara, a submerged engineer-in-training, is called back to her earlier days at sea as she takes up her new job in space. One of her favorite moments, she said, was receiving a video from a friend’s team doing a research trip in the Pacific Ocean.
The friend “shared a video of a baby octopus hatching on the sea floor there,” O’Hara recalled. Later that day, a NASA astronaut found herself flying over the same area of water where the video was taken.
“It’s just this moment where I’m up in a cupola,” O’Hara said, referring to the folding window used for ISS anchoring and photography. “I’m in space, in this incredible space station that we built. And somewhere under that water is a baby octopus, going through its first few days of life.
“That’s happening all over the world in a million different ways,” she continued. “It’s just this recognition of how complex and diverse and beautiful the Universe is, and all the life it supports.”
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NASA and Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos routinely fly astronauts aboard each other’s spacecraft for policy reasons; O’Hara had a Soyuz spacecraft seat as part of a series of four announced by NASA in mid-2022. (NASA and Roscosmos also like to have a backup spacecraft available in case of a glitch.)
O’Hara launched and landed with a different Russian-led crew, however, due to ISS crew requirements. She went to space on September 15, 2023 with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub aboard the Soyuz named MS-24. O’Hara spent six months in space, but he left before his Russian cosmonaut colleagues, who currently remain in space for a one-year mission.
O’Hara returned home on MS-24 on April 6, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and space flight participant Marina Vasilevskaya (the first Belarusian woman to go to space).
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya returned to Earth on their two-week mission that began March 23. They launched with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, who will spend six months in space, on Soyuz MS-25. The launch of Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and Dyson was delayed by two days due to a battery issue (quickly resolved) that caused a rare launch pad abort on March 21st.
