First French woman spacewalks, ISS antenna waits

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and France's Sophie Adenot spent more than six hours outside the International Space Station on Tuesday. Their job: swap out a broken antenna the station uses to talk to mission control in Houston. They got the broken one off and tied down safely. But they ran out of time before they could bolt the replacement into place, so it's still waiting, stowed nearby.

Adenot, 44, made history doing it. She's the first French woman ever to walk in space. She's only the second woman from Europe to do it, after Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti in 2022. French President Emmanuel Macron called her a symbol of national pride. None of that made the antenna swap any easier. Working in a bulky spacesuit, tethered to the station, every task takes far longer than it would on the ground. This was the 282nd spacewalk in the station's history, and delays like this one are routine.

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When will the antenna actually get installed? NASA hasn't announced a date for the next attempt. The station isn't stranded in the meantime. It has a second, working antenna handling the same job. But that system is a backup astronauts rely on to reach Earth. It isn't something NASA wants to leave unresolved for long.