ISS Solar Array Upgrade Done as Kutryk Spacewalks

The ISS solar array upgrade is finally done, and a Canadian helped finish it. Astronaut Joshua Kutryk and NASA's Anil Menon stepped outside the International Space Station on Thursday morning and installed the eighth and final roll-out solar array, closing a power project that began back in February of twenty twenty-one.

What happened outside the station

According to NASA, the two astronauts began the spacewalk at eight thirty-six in the morning Eastern time and wrapped at three thirty-five in the afternoon. That is six hours and fifty-nine minutes in the vacuum of space, a full workday with no coffee break.

Their job was to install and deploy the last International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array, known as an IROSA, on the station's 3B power channel. NASA says the array unfurled after it was mounted on the starboard truss, the long structural backbone of the orbiting lab.

It was the second outing in a week for the pair. The Canadian Press reported that on October twenty-ninth, Kutryk became the fifth Canadian to perform a spacewalk when he and Menon installed the seventh array. Thursday was the sequel, and this time the ISS solar array upgrade was the whole mission.

How the handoff works

Before the walk, NASA explained that Kutryk would translate to the starboard truss while Menon, attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm, carried the folded array over. Menon then handed it to Kutryk before detaching himself, and the tasks mostly repeated the first spacewalk on the opposite side of the truss.

Kutryk wore the suit with the red stripes, which marks the lead spacewalker. Think of it as the jersey number that tells mission control who is who when two people in identical white suits are floating around.

Why the power boost matters

The station's original solar wings have been running since December of the year two thousand, and they were designed to last about fifteen years. They still work, but they show signs of wear. Instead of ripping them out, engineers mounted the new arrays right in front of the old ones.

According to pv magazine USA, the finished set boosts power generation by up to thirty percent, taking total capacity from about one hundred sixty kilowatts to roughly two hundred fifteen. The same report says each new wing deploys to a length of nineteen point four meters and was built by Redwire Space.

More electricity means more room to run experiments, more life support headroom, and more flexibility for visiting spacecraft. It is basically a battery-saver mode upgrade for a lab that never gets to plug into a wall outlet.

A long road to this moment

NASA says astronauts have completed eighteen spacewalks to prepare for and install these arrays since the program started. The compact wings arrive folded inside SpaceX cargo spacecraft, then get carried out and rolled open like a yoga mat made of solar cells.

The October spacewalk was also the hundredth American spacewalk from the station, a milestone NASA highlighted. For Canada, two spacewalks in seven days by one astronaut is a big moment for the Canadian Space Agency, which says spacewalks are among the most difficult and dangerous tasks astronauts take on.

Why Gen Z should care

Space can feel far away, but this is infrastructure, the same kind of boring-until-it-breaks stuff that keeps your phone charged. The station is a shared home for researchers from many countries, and its experiments cover medicine, materials and biology. Reliable power keeps those studies running day and night.

It is also a reminder that big projects get finished one small step at a time. Eighteen spacewalks over nearly six years sounds slow, yet each one added a little more capacity until the whole upgrade clicked into place.

What comes next

With the final array in place, the multi-year augmentation program is complete. Expect the focus to shift back to science, upkeep and the long question of how the station will eventually be retired. For now, the ISS solar array upgrade is a rare space story with a clean ending: the job was planned, executed and finished.

For more on the science beat, check out the science coverage and the latest Canada stories right here on GenZ NewZ.