The First Ever All-Female Spacewalk Is Happening RIGHT NOW

The first all-female spacewalk is finally happening!!

Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch are making history at this very moment as the first women to walk out into space without men. It’s a ridiculous statement, but here we are, at last!

The women embarked on the journey earlier this morning, leaving the International Space Station to replace a failed power controller. The event is being live-streamed on the NASA Twitter and is expected to take just under six hours total.

This momentous occasion takes place five months after what was supposed to be the first ever all-female spacewalk failed to take place due to the space station not having enough suits to fit two female astronauts. Anne McClain was supposed to join Kock on that walk, but wound up having to stay behind. (She did later make history anyway by being the first astronaut accused of a space crime.)

Now, half a year later, Koch is joined by Meir, who is on her very first spacewalk.

“What we’re doing now shows all the work that went in for the decades prior, all of the women that worked to get us where we are today,” Meir said about women working on the space station at a recent press conference. “I think the nice thing for us is we don’t even really think about it on a daily basis, it’s just normal.”

“There are a lot of people that derive motivation from inspiring stories from people that look like them and I think it’s an important aspect of the story to tell,” said Koch.

And as the world watches the very first ever all-female spacewalk, many just hope that soon, this kind of thing won’t be a historic occasion. It will just be a normal part of life — well, as normal as chilling in space can ever be.