The first-ever all-female spacewalk is scheduled to take place on March 29 and will feature astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch, NASA confirmed Tuesday. The two astronauts are going to be supported on the ground by flight director Mary Lawrence and Kristen Facciol serving as part of the flight control team, who will be located at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The big picture: The first American woman in space was Sally Ride, who flew with the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. However, spacewalks are relatively rare events, primarily occurring to make mechanical repairs to the International Space Station. The odds have therefore favored male dominated or male-female spacewalks, based on the composition of most ISS flight crews.
The tornadoes that ripped through Lee County, Alabama, on Sunday evening, tearing homes apart like a half-mile-wide buzzsaw, are being blamed for at least 23 fatalities.
Why it matters: This death toll makes Sunday the deadliest tornado day in the U.S. since an EF-5 tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, in May 2013, killing 24.
At least 23 people were killed and several others injured in Alabama, as twisters struck across the Southeast Sunday.
The big picture: Tornadoes were also reported in Georgia and Florida, but the hardest-hit area was in Beauregard in Lee County, Alabama, AP reports. The county's sheriff, Jay Jones, said there would be an organized search Monday morning for people still missing, according to WSFA. The storms were part of a larger weather system bringing heavy snow to New York and Boston overnight.
