US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir became the first all-female pairing to carry out a spacewalk Friday, following a spacesuit flub earlier this year that caused the historic mission to be aborted.

The first such mission was supposed to take place in March but had to be cancelled because the space agency had only one medium-sized suit, with a male-female combination performing the required task at a later date.

“Christina, you may egress the airlock,” spacecraft communicator Stephanie Wilson told the pair shortly after they began their mission to replace a power controller at 1138 GMT.

Traditionally male-dominated NASA’s failure to be adequately prepared was denounced in some quarters as evidence of implicit sexism.Koch is leading Meir, who is making her first ever spacewalk.