Peggy Whitson may break Sunita Williams' spacewalking record soon

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is set to break Indian-American Sunita Williams' spacewalking record, as she prepares for her eight spacewalk aboard the International Space Station (ISS) today.

Williams has made seven spacewalks totalling 50 hours and 40 minutes, and hold the records for most spacewalks by a woman and most spacewalk time for a woman.

Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Whitson's last spacewalk was on January 6 with Commander Shane Kimbrough when she hooked up new lithium-ion batteries and inspected the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

Whitson and Kimbrough will finish cable connections at the Pressurised Mating Adapter-3 just recently attached to the Harmony module's space-facing port.

The PMA-3 relocation gets the ISS ready for the new International Docking Adapter-3 set to be delivered on a future SpaceX Dragon cargo mission.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who conducted last week's spacewalk with Kimbrough, will assist the duo in and out of their spacesuits and monitor the activities from inside the station.

The spacewalkers are scheduled to exit the Quest airlock today at 5:30 PM IST for 6.5 hours of station maintenance work.