Sunita poised to set space walking record

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, the first person of Indian descent to take a stroll in space, is all set to become the world's most experienced woman space walker.Starting with an outing at 8:30 a.m. IST Thursday, flight engineer Williams and International Space Station (ISS) commander Michael Lopez-Alegria will take three spacewalks in nine days to step up station assembly before NASA shuttles stop flying in 2010.Their main job is to attach the US-made Destiny laboratory to a new cooling system installed at the half-built space station during the last shuttle flight, a round trip of 8.5 million km, in December.
The next two space walks are scheduled for Feb 4 and 8. If time allows, they will photograph a solar panel that is due to be folded up during the next shuttle mission in March.While Williams will top the women's list with four spacewalks on completion of the work, Lopez-Alegria too will become US space agency's lead spacewalker with 10 after a fourth spacewalk Feb 22 with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin