Article Posted on : - Sep 06, 2012

Spacewalkers Aki Hoshide and Suni Williams work outside the International Space Station. A NASA TV photo

HOUSTON (PTI): Indian-American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and her Japanese counterpart Akihiko Hoshide have successfully restored power to the International Space Station (ISS) on their second attempt.

With Wednesday's space excursion, Williams has also surpassed Peggy Whitson's record of total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut.

Whitson worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks. Williams has conducted six spacewalks for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes.

In reply to Whitson's congratulatory message: "You go, girl!", Williams replied: "Anybody could be in these boots."

The astronauts had to go into space for the second time in less than a week. Wednesday's spacewalk lasted 6 hours 28 minutes.

Williams and Hoshide successfully completed repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism of the orbital outpost, the repairing of which ran into problems earlier this week.

As a result of the faults in the system, the astronauts had to save energy by turning off part of the solar cells and de-energised some compartments of the station.

This was the second attempt to correct the problem.

Earlier on Aug 30, Williams and Hoshide were in space for more than eight hours, but failed to fix the unit and attach it correctly to the ISS.