ISS Spacewalk Finishes Solar Upgrade With Canadian

An ISS spacewalk set for Thursday morning is about to close out one of the longest upgrade projects in the history of the International Space Station, and a Canadian is helping do it. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency are due to install the eighth and final roll-out solar array, according to Space.com.

The outing was scheduled to begin at eight thirty in the morning Eastern time and last roughly seven hours. NASA streamed live coverage, and its station blog described the pair suiting up for what it calls the final power upgrade spacewalk. Mission managers had already given the go-ahead a day earlier.

What the ISS spacewalk is actually fixing

Think of the station like a giant phone that has been running for over two decades on an aging battery. Its original solar wings were built to produce power for years, but they slowly wear down. The roll-out arrays, known as iROSA, are newer panels that unfurl like a yoga mat and bolt on in front of the old ones.

The first of them went up in June of twenty twenty-one. The job will finish a process that took more than five years, according to NASA officials quoted by Space.com. The station's power generating capacity will rise from one hundred sixty kilowatts to about two hundred fifteen kilowatts, which is a boost of roughly thirty percent.

More power matters because the station is crowded with experiments. Biotech studies, plant growth trials and cargo operations all draw electricity, and the lab is expected to keep running for years. A healthier power grid means fewer tough choices about which research gets switched off.

A big week for Canada in orbit

This is the second spacewalk of the week for the duo. On October twenty-ninth, Menon and Kutryk installed the seventh array, and Space.com notes that outing was the one hundredth United States spacewalk from the station. It was also the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut since twenty nineteen.

That is a nice moment for the Canadian space program, which has a long record of supplying robotic arms and astronauts to the orbiting lab. Kutryk only arrived on the station on October first, aboard SpaceX's Crew-13 mission, so he has gone from launch to two spacewalks in about a month.

Menon has a different kind of first to his name this week. NASA reports he voted from the station on Election Day, showing off a makeshift voting booth in a photo from November third. Space does not stop democracy, apparently.

Who else is up there

Menon and Kutryk share the station with five other people: NASA's Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins, plus cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Delaney, Kutryk, Teteryatnikov and Watkins came up on Crew-13, while Dubrov, Kikina and Menon arrived in mid-July on a Russian Soyuz.

Inside the airlock, crewmates play a quiet but vital role. Watkins helped Kutryk with spacesuit fit checks earlier this week, according to NASA's blog. Those checks even account for changes like spinal elongation that happen in microgravity, because a suit that fits on the ground can feel different after weeks in orbit.

Why you should care

It is easy to scroll past a story about solar panels, but this one is about keeping a floating science lab alive. The station is one of the few places where researchers can test medicine, materials and food in microgravity, and none of that works without reliable electricity.

It also shows how slow, patient engineering wins. Eight arrays over more than five years is not flashy, yet it adds the equivalent of about fifty-five kilowatts of capacity to a structure that was never designed to be rebuilt in the sky. Every bolt is placed by a person in a bulky suit, floating above Earth.

For anyone dreaming of a career in space, the Canadian angle is a reminder that you do not have to be American to walk outside the station. What comes next for the spacewalking crew is rest, research and, eventually, a ride home. For the station, the next chapter starts with a stronger power grid.

Check NASA's coverage for the final word on how the work went, because spacewalk timelines can shift while astronauts handle the unexpected. Either way, this ISS spacewalk marks the end of a long upgrade chapter, and a milestone for Canada's astronaut corps.