On this day in space! July 25, 1984: First spacewalk by a woman

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The Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya spent over three hours in space.

On July 25, 1984, the Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to embark on a spacewalk, also known as an extravehicular activity (EVA).

She spent three hours and 35 minutes doing welding experiments outside Russia's Salyut 7 space station with her colleague Vladimir Dzhanibekov. They were cutting and welding metal and testing out new tools.

Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya performing a spacewalk during the Soyuz T-12 mission. (Image credit: TASS / Contributor via Getty Images)
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During this mission, she also became the first woman to return to space for a second mission.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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