Italian becomes first European woman on spacewalk outside ISS

PARIS: Italian Samantha Cristoforetti became the first European woman astronaut to embark on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Thursday, Nasa footage showed.

Cristoforetti was joined by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev on the spacewalk which began just before 1500 GMT, with the pair expected to spend around six and half hours more than 400-km above Earth.

Among their tasks is work on a Europe-made robotic arm which just a week ago became embroiled in tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Early last week the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, furious at the European Space Agency’s decision to cut ties with Moscow on a Mars rover mission, told cosmonauts on the ISS to stop using the European Robotic Arm.