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First American woman to walk in space now 1st woman to reach earth’s lowest point
Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, has achieved another first, and that too, at the age of 68! She has become the first woman to reach the lowest-known point on earth, according to media reports. On June 7, former NASA astronaut Sullivan reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, almost 6.
Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, has achieved another first, and that too, at the age of 68! She has become the first woman to reach the lowest-known point on earth, according to media reports.
On June 7, former NASA astronaut Sullivan reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, almost 6.9 miles or 11,000 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, according to EYOS Expeditions, the company coordinating the logistics of the mission.
Challenger Deep, which is within the Mariana Trench in western Pacific lying about 1,000 miles east of the Philippines, is considered to be the deepest point in Earth’s oceans.
Sullivan, accompanied by Victor Vescovo, an entrepreneur and deep sea explorer, in a deep sea submersible, emerged from her 35,810-foot dive on Sunday after an expedition that lasted just under four hours, according to a report in cnet dot com.
The dive made Sullivan the first person to both walk in space and to descend to the deepest point in the ocean.
The duo celebrated their return by making a call to the International Space Station (ISS), at an altitude of around 254 miles or 408 km above the earth.
“As a hybrid oceanographer and astronaut this was an extraordinary day, a once in a lifetime day, seeing the moonscape of the Challenger Deep and then comparing notes with my colleagues on the ISS about our remarkable reusable inner-space outer-spacecraft,” Kathy Sullivan said in a statement.
The space station’s newest crew members - Douglas Hurley and Bob Behnken- recently created space history by becoming the first NASA astronauts to be delivered to the ISS aboard a space capsule built by a private company. The duo reached the space station on May 30 aboard Crew Dragon capsule built by entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
Kathy Sullivan created history 36 years ago on October 11, 1984 by becoming the first American to walk in space.
After Sunday’s dive, she is now only the 8th person to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
