NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams completed a 6.5 hour EVA outside the International Space Station today. During the event, Suni Williams became the record-holder for the most accumulated time by a woman for spacewalks. Williams now has 62 hours, 6 minutes of total spacewalk time. She is fourth on NASA’s all-time list as well.

The two astronauts are, of course, part of the current political kerfuffle surrounding their stay on ISS, when they were assigned to ISS Expedition 71/72 after it was decided to return their Starliner capsule home uncrewed thanks to technical concerns about the Boeing spacecraft.

During their pair’s EVA, Williams surpassed former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson’s total spacewalking time of 60 hours and 21 minutes.

The former record holder posted her congratulations today on X.com:

Handing the baton off to Suni for most spacewalking time for a female. Records are meant to be broken! Congratulations @Astro_Suni! https://t.co/BEyqUI7KWo

— Peggy Whitson (@AstroPeggy) January 30, 2025

While outside ISS, the Williams and Wilmore performed work to remove an antenna assembly from the station’s truss, collected samples of surface material for analysis from the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock to see whether microorganisms exist on the exterior of ISS, and they also prepared a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

Coming Home This Spring

The pair are set to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon in late March or early April. Currently, Crew 10 is slated to launch on March 24th, and after a handoff period Crew 9 will return to Earth with Williams and Wilmore aboard a Crew Dragon.

After they joined Expedition’s 71/72 crew, the plan was to bring them home in February, but delays in SpaceX’s completing and qualifying a new Dragon capsule that will be used for the mission forced NASA to further extend the length of their unexpected stay in space.