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.

Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station. Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space agency. Read: Russian filmmakers land after shoot aboard space station The third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu, assisted from inside the station, CMS said on its website. Wang, 41, and Zhai, 55, had both traveled to China’s now-retired experimental space stations, and Zhai conducted China’s first spacewalk 13 years ago. The three are the second crew on the permanent station, and the mission that began with their arrival Oct. 16 is scheduled to be the longest stretch of time in space yet for Chinese astronauts. The Tianhe module of the station will be connected next year to two more sections named Mengtian and Wentian. The completed station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons. Read:China astronauts return after 90 days aboard space station Three spacewalks are planned to install equipment in preparation for the station's expansion, while the crew will also assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct experiments in space medicine and other fields. China’s military-run space program plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional.