<p>Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams set a new record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut with her sixth space walk to repair a faulty power distribution unit.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Williams surpassed Peggy Whitson's record during Wednesday's excursion as she and her Japanese counterpart Akihiko Hoshide used a toothbrush and a wire brush fashioned out of a spare cable to restore power to the International Space Station.<br /><br />The spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes. Williams has now worked outside the station for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes overtaking Whitson who worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks, US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced.<br /><br />Peggy Whitson sent up congratulations, saying, "You go, girl!" Williams replied: "Anybody could be in these boots."<br /><br />Williams and Hoshide had to go into space for the second time in less than a week to complete repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism, the repairing of which ran into problems earlier this week.<br /><br />It appeared that there was significant debris, especially metal shavings, that had accumulated inside the bolts and was preventing them from attaching it to the space craft and securing the unit.<br /><br />With repeated attempts to clean out the bolts with a wire brush failing, they fastened a simple toothbrush to a metal pole. And that worked.<br /><br />"Looks like you guys just fixed the station," astronaut Jack Fischer radioed from Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.<br /><br />Daughter of an Indian American father from Gujarat and a Slovenian mother, Williams holds three records for female space travellers: longest spaceflight (195 days), number of spacewalks (six) and total time spent on spacewalks (44 hours and 2 minutes).<br /><br />She is the second woman of Indian heritage to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla and the second astronaut of Slovenian heritage after Ronald M. Sega.</p>
<p>Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams set a new record for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut with her sixth space walk to repair a faulty power distribution unit.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Williams surpassed Peggy Whitson's record during Wednesday's excursion as she and her Japanese counterpart Akihiko Hoshide used a toothbrush and a wire brush fashioned out of a spare cable to restore power to the International Space Station.<br /><br />The spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes. Williams has now worked outside the station for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes overtaking Whitson who worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks, US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced.<br /><br />Peggy Whitson sent up congratulations, saying, "You go, girl!" Williams replied: "Anybody could be in these boots."<br /><br />Williams and Hoshide had to go into space for the second time in less than a week to complete repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism, the repairing of which ran into problems earlier this week.<br /><br />It appeared that there was significant debris, especially metal shavings, that had accumulated inside the bolts and was preventing them from attaching it to the space craft and securing the unit.<br /><br />With repeated attempts to clean out the bolts with a wire brush failing, they fastened a simple toothbrush to a metal pole. And that worked.<br /><br />"Looks like you guys just fixed the station," astronaut Jack Fischer radioed from Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.<br /><br />Daughter of an Indian American father from Gujarat and a Slovenian mother, Williams holds three records for female space travellers: longest spaceflight (195 days), number of spacewalks (six) and total time spent on spacewalks (44 hours and 2 minutes).<br /><br />She is the second woman of Indian heritage to have been selected by NASA for a space mission after Kalpana Chawla and the second astronaut of Slovenian heritage after Ronald M. Sega.</p>