Two astronauts spent more than seven hours tethered to the outside of the International Space Station on Thursday, bolting a new solar wing onto its truss in a spacewalk that leaves just one more panel standing between the orbiting laboratory and a long-promised power upgrade.
NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk floated out of the Quest airlock and spent 7 hours and 11 minutes installing and unfurling a new International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array, or IROSA, on the station's 2A power channel, according to NASA's mission blog. It was the seventh of eight new arrays NASA has been fitting to the station's aging truss in recent years, and the 285th spacewalk conducted in support of the outpost since its first crew arrived in 2000.
The excursion, designated US spacewalk 100, was also a pair of firsts. It was Kutryk's maiden spacewalk and the first by a Canadian astronaut in nearly seven years, while Menon, a former SpaceX flight surgeon turned astronaut, notched his fourth.
One array to go
The new wing, which unrolls like a yoga mat rather than unfolding accordion-style like the station's original 1990s-era panels, is designed to sit in front of the existing arrays and boost their output rather than replace them. Once the eighth and final IROSA goes up on the station's 3B power channel during a spacewalk NASA has scheduled for November 5, the agency says total generating capacity will climb from roughly 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts, an increase of up to 30%.
NASA has framed the added power as more than a convenience. The agency says the extra capacity will help support the station's critical systems, including, eventually, the controlled deorbit it is planning once the complex's working life ends later this decade, a maneuver that will require sustained power to the very end.
The array swap-out has unfolded in stages since 2021, with earlier IROSAs installed across several prior spacewalks. Thursday's work leaves NASA, Menon and Kutryk's crewmates, and mission controllers one more excursion away from closing out a project that began years before this crew rotation arrived on orbit.
