Science: Soviet Coup

A giant step for womankind

U.S. Astronaut Kathy Sullivan had hoped that on a shuttle flight next October she would become the first woman to walk in space. Last week, however, Soviet Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, 36, beat her to it. Accompanied by the mission commander, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Savitskaya spent 3 hr. 35 min. outside the Salyut7 space station, wielding an experimental tool to cut and solder metal plates. Shaped like a large camera, the all-purpose, hand-operated device emits a laser-like beam of electrons. Savitskaya and Dzhanibekov then switched roles, and she photographed him as he worked.

Marveled a deputy flight director as he watched the operation from a TV monitor in Soviet Central Asia: “Women really can do everything.”

The space walk is the latest in a long string of Soviet firsts: the first spacecraft in orbit, the first animal in space (a dog), the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first man to walk in space. And with this latest flight, Savitskaya has tallied yet another: the first woman to return to space. Two years ago, the cosmonaut-researcher conducted experiments in astrophysics, medicine and biotechnology aboard Salyut-7. Again an American was upstaged: Sally Ride was planning to become the first two-time female astronaut when she joined Kathy Sullivan on the shuttle this October.