Having the residual Olympic fever in our systems helps when we hear of new records being broken. However this one has nothing to do with a global sports meet and everything to do with the largest cooperative science project being run out of this world.

On 6 September 2012 NASA announced that Sunita Williams, an astronaut currently located on the International Space Station, has broken the Space Walk record for longest time spent in space. The previous record was held by Peggy Whitson who has a total of 39 hours and 46 minutes in space walking time.

Thursday Sunita Williams spent 6 hours 28 minutes outside the International Space Station with Japanese astronaut, Akihiko Hoshide. The two were effecting repairs on the main power unit switching mechanism and installing a camera on the robotic arm of the space station.

Adding this latest space walk to Sunita William’s previous total sent her time on space walks to 44 hours and 2 minutes, beating Peggy’s old record. On hearing the news Peggy responded by saying “You go girl!” The congratulatory message was relayed to Sunita who responded by saying “Anybody could be in these boots.”

Well, we know it could not be just anybody in those boots. It took a lot of hard work and dedication to science space projects to get her the opportunity to set this record.