They aren’t always blue sometimes tan or olive drab instead but often are and even when they are blue they are often missing the flag.
On This Day, October 11, 1984, NASA astronaut Kathryn D. “Kathy” Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger during mission STS-41G, Sullivan ventured outside the spacecraft alongside fellow astronaut David C. Leestma.
Floating above Earth, surrounded by the vast darkness of space, the two astronauts worked to demonstrate a system designed to refuel satellites while in orbit.
Their spacewalk lasted 3 hours and 29 minutes.
But Sullivan’s achievement was part of a much bigger story.
Just three months earlier, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya had become the first woman in the world to walk in space. Sullivan then made history as the first American woman to accomplish the feat.
The STS-41G mission also marked the first spaceflight to carry two women together: Sullivan and astronaut Sally Ride.
And Sullivan’s achievements did not end in space.
In June 2020, she descended to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, becoming the first woman to reach the deepest known part of the ocean.
From the vacuum of space to the crushing depths of the sea, Sullivan explored two of Earth’s most extreme frontiers.