Spacewalk
Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity performed by an astronaut in outer space outside of a spacecraft. This includes spacewalks, lunar or planetary surface exploration (commonly known as moonwalks), and stand-up EVAs (SEVAs) where astronauts stand through an open hatch without fully leaving the spacecraft. EVAs have been conducted by the Soviet Union/Russia, the United States, and China, with astronauts from Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the European Space Agency also participating in EVAs conducted by those nations. Since there is no atmosphere in space, the astronaut is completely dependent on the space suit for environmental support.
On March 18, 1965, Alexei Leonov conducted the first spacewalk, lasting 12 minutes and 9 seconds during the Voskhod 2 mission. Neil Armstrong performed the first moonwalk on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, lasting 2 hours and 31 minutes. Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to conduct a spacewalk in 1984, spending 3 hours and 35 minutes outside the Salyut 7 space station. Astronauts on the last three crewed lunar landing missions, Apollo 15, 16, and 17, also performed deep space EVAs to retrieve film canisters. In 1973, American astronauts Pete Conrad, Joseph Kerwin, and Paul Weitz conducted an EVA to repair launch damage to Skylab, the United States' first space station.
EVAs can be tethered, where the astronaut is connected to the spacecraft with an umbilical cable for oxygen and power, or untethered. Untethered spacewalks were conducted on three missions in 1984 using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) and in a 1994 flight test of the Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER) safety device worn on tethered U.S. EVAs.
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