In photos: Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti takes Europe's historic 1st female spacewalk

The first European female spacewalker,Samantha Cristoforetti, completed a seven hour spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on July 21.

The last time a European participated in a Russian spacewalk was almost 25 years ago. They spent 7 hours configuring a new robotic arm for the Russian segment of the space station.

There are more space adventures in this slideshow.

The space station's robotic arm was configured by spacewalkers.

The Orlan spacesuit that Cristoforetti wore during her July 21 excursion was made in Russia. The Orlans are designed to be used in space with no return to the ground for servicing.

Old Orlans can be put in Progress cargo spaceships to burn up in the atmosphere or thrown away.

The stripes on the space suits are used to distinguish spacewalkers from each other. The lead spacewalker is visible to the right of the picture in red stripes. In the center of the view is a picture of Cristoforetti.

Ground support can assist the spacesuited crew by looking at what the crew is looking at in real time when a spacewalk is broadcast in real time.

Since she was working in microgravity, she was able to orient her body in a way that made it easier to get to the equipment on the outside of the Russian segment. The neutral buoyancy laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is one of the places where astronauts must train.

The large pool in the laboratory has modules similar to the ones on the International Space Station, which allow crews to learn how to maneuver in microgravity. As spacesuit resources are limited, each spacewalk is practiced to make sure that everything can be accomplished in time.

On several spacewalk tasks, Cristoforetti and Artemyev worked together. The European Robotic Arm will use a temporary platform. The arm was installed on a space walk.

There will be more equipment and scientific around the Russian segment of the space station. The Canadian Canadarm2 robotic arm and the Japanese Kibo robotic arm are veterans in helping the space station's mandate of conducting research.

The Nauka module was put together by Artemyev and Cristoforetti after they worked on the arms. The goal is for this to be a support for the crews doing Russian segment spacewalks.

The External Man Machine interface was one of the tasks that Artemyev did. Future spacewalkers will be able to use the arm outside the space station. The European Robotic Arm is the only one on the station that can be controlled from the outside.

Working amid spectacular views of the Earth and of the space station, Cristoforetti and her Russian colleague released 10 small satellites by hand. The machines were named after a rocket pioneer in the Soviet era.

Artemyev said "I see the Earth and deploy in progress" as he released the first of the satellites. It goes.

While ground teams did their best to schedule tasks that would fit in with the projected seven-hour spacewalk timelines, the spacewalkers were delayed in exiting the hatch by 40 minutes. One of the major tasks was put off by Moscow.

The task of extending a Strela boom between the Zarya service module and the Poisk research module was supposed to make future spacewalks easier. Russian mission control radioed to the spacewalkers that the task was terminated because of the constraints of the spacesuit.

The spacewalkers went to the Poisk airlock after closing out their tasks. The spacewalk ends at 2 pm It was Artemyev's sixth career spacewalk and the sixth in as many years for the International Space Station.

Since 1998, the International Space Station has had 251 spacewalks to support the assembly, upgrade and maintenance. While Cristoforetti was the first European to go to the International Space Station, three other astronauts from the European Space Agency have gone before as well.

Cristoforetti thanked the support teams in a message on July 28, 2022.

Thank you! She thanked everyone in Europe, Moscow, Houston and the Space Station. Thanks for working to make this possible, thanks for training, the planning, the real-time support, the videos and pictures, the trust and the encouragement. It was a dream.