Space station's toothbrush fix; astronaut breaks spacewalk record

Surrounded by expensive, high-tech equipment, astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide had to resort to a toothbrush and elbow grease to fix a bolt on the International Space Station on Wednesday.

This added credence to a lesson NASA's Williams said she'd learned before: "You can't get married to a plan."

She added: "It seems like something you thought was going to be difficult turns out to be easy, and something you thought was going to be easy turns out to be hard."

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Williams wrote about the "sticky" bolt in a blog post earlier this week that revealed the patience and stamina of the Indian American astronaut, who reportedly holds the record as the woman with the longest space flight: 195 days. She's also now the woman with the most experience walking in space.

With Wednesday's outing, Williams broke the record for time spent spacewalking by a female astronaut, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly confirmed Thursday to the Los Angeles Times.

On Wednesday, Williams and Japanese astronaut Hoshide tackled the bolt, which was plugged with metal shavings, to install a new power-relay unit. The bolt problem had cut power to the space station that is gathered from eight solar wings, according to an Associated Press report. Astronauts had been forced to shut down some equipment.

During a 6-hour spacewalk Wednesday, the pair applied grease to the bolt and cleaned it with the toothbrush and a wire brush. They also just plain jiggled it.

Back on Earth, NASA scientists celebrated.

"Looks like you fixed the station," Mission Control told the crew on the radio amid applause, according to the AP.

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Space station's toothbrush fix; astronaut breaks spacewalk record