It’s been a wild ride with NASA in the last few days. Initially, we thought history was about to be made with the first all-women spacewalk finally happening. Astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch were supposed to do the spacewalk on Friday, March 29. On Monday, however, NASA announced the plan had to be canceled. Why?
According to the agency, it all comes down to a medium-sized spacesuit. Or rather, the lack of a second medium-sized spacesuit.
"Mission managers decided to adjust the assignments, due in part to spacesuit availability on the station," NASA said in a press release. "McClain learned during her first spacewalk that a medium-size hard upper torso—essentially the shirt of the spacesuit—fits her best. Because only one medium-size torso can be made ready by Friday, March 29, Koch will wear it."
I know, I know. The idea that women are being thwarted because of clothing is a little too on the nose, but NASA’s reasoning seems to be legitimate. Let’s unpack why below.
The logic seems to come down to safety. McClain did her EVA (extravehicular activity) in a size large spacesuit and quickly realized it wasn’t working. She felt she’d be able to work better in a suit with a medium-sized torso. And this is no small change: The torso is a fiber-glass shell. The fit isn’t solely an issue of comfort, either. If it’s not snug enough, it’s too difficult to actually reach control dials on the front. Spacewalks are strenuous as it is; if an astronaut truly feels their suit isn’t the right fit, it does seem better to err on the side of caution than encourage them to go ahead regardless.
In an interview with the New York Times, NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz explained a similar rationale. “When you have the option of just switching the people, the mission becomes more important than a cool milestone,” she stated. For reference, making the additional medium-sized suit needed for the two women to participate would take about 12 hours of labor, as reported by Ars Technica.
Which leads us to the latest development: astronaut Nick Hague (who wears a larger suit) will make the journey alongside Koch instead. The pair will be replacing a set of batteries that store solar power that the station uses when it’s in the Earth’s shadow.
In a different interview, Schierholz dropped another relative bombshell: NASA didn’t intend to make history at all."It really is the luck of the draw," Schierholz told Space.com. Basically, they only realized it would be women-only after Koch and McClain were assigned. Comforting? Not really.
As NPR reported back in 2006, having enough spacesuit sizes available isn’t exactly a strong point for NASA. In fact, as Nell Greenfieldboyce reported years ago, women may have lost opportunities because spacesuits only came in medium, large, and extra-large. At one point, they did come in a size small, but that was cut in the ‘90s during a redesign period.
You might wonder: How many people did this cut impact, really? As of 2003, the agency found that roughly one-third of women astronauts in their agency couldn’t fit into the suits they had on hand. Lovely.
Today, there are no official plans for an all-women spacewalk via NASA. But in her interview with the Times, Schierholz did say she thinks it’s coming, one way or another. "We're sort of getting to the point of inevitability," she stated. Twelve out of the agency’s 38 astronauts are women, so change is likely on the horizon, slow and steady—or not.
UPDATE:
Hillary Clinton has some thoughts, and she isn’t holding back on Twitter:
What do you think about her point?