United News of Bangladesh

NASA’s two stranded astronauts conducted their first spacewalk together on Thursday, stepping out of the International Space Station nearly eight months after arriving, reports AP. Commander Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore ventured outside to carry out maintenance tasks and swab the station’s exterior for any surviving microbes that may have escaped from Earth through vents. Are we all aliens? NASA's returned asteroid samples hold the ingredients of life from a watery world “Here we go,” Wilmore said as he emerged 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Spain. The duo initially planned to stay for just a week upon their arrival at the space station last June. However, their newly deployed spacecraft, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, encountered significant issues, prompting NASA to send it back empty. As a result, the two test pilots, both retired Navy captains, have remained in orbit, awaiting a SpaceX mission to bring them home. Due to a delay in launching their replacements, their return is now scheduled for late March or early April, extending their mission to a total of 10 months. NASA's Parker Solar Probe aims to fly closer to the sun like never before Williams had already conducted a spacewalk two weeks ago alongside another NASA astronaut. This was Wilmore’s first spacewalk of the mission, though both astronauts had previous spacewalking experience during earlier space station missions.