Astronauts Install Final Solar Array in ISS Power Upgrade

Menon and Kutryk went outside the International Space Station on November 5 to install the station’s eighth and last deployable solar array. The spacewalk was scheduled to last about seven hours, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. NASA’s live coverage was set to start at 7 a.m. Eastern time.

The installation completes a power-system upgrade that began in June 2021. With the new arrays, the station’s power-generation capacity is expected to rise from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts, an increase of roughly 30%.

The astronauts installed the seventh array during a spacewalk on October 29. The outing marked the 100th U.S. spacewalk conducted from the station and the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut since 2019. The November 5 outing is the 101st U.S. spacewalk from the ISS.

Menon and Kutryk are among seven people aboard the station. The other crew members are NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins, alongside Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Four arrived on October 1 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-13 mission; Dubrov, Kikina and Menon arrived in mid-July on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.