New Solar Wing Rises on Space Station in Spacewalk

New Solar Wing hardware is now in place outside the station after two astronauts spent most of Thursday working in open space to fit a roll-out panel to the port-side truss. The outing, which began in the morning and ran for about six and three-quarter hours, moved a years-long effort to modernize the orbiting laboratory's electricity supply close to the finish line, with one final panel still to go.

According to NASA, astronaut Anil Menon and astronaut Joshua Kutryk left the airlock together and released the folded panel from its carrier before guiding it into position. Menon then rode the station's robotic arm to the worksite with the panel in hand, while Kutryk made his way along the truss to meet him. Once both were in place, the pair secured the panel so flight controllers on the ground could unroll it and switch it on.

The hardware arrived at the station earlier in October tucked inside the unpressurized trunk of a cargo capsule, which carried the final pair of roll-out panels to orbit. Each panel is designed to unfurl like a carpet using stored spring tension rather than motors, a trick that keeps the mechanism light and simple. The design matters because the station's original rigid panels have been losing output as they age, and the newer wings produce more electricity from a smaller footprint.

A Canadian milestone in open space

For Kutryk, the outing carried a personal and national milestone. The Royal Canadian Air Force colonel and test pilot arrived at the station at the start of October as part of a crew rotation, and Thursday marked his first time outside a spacecraft. He became the fifth Canadian to walk in space and the first to do so since David Saint-Jacques went outside in 2019, according to reports of the mission.

Menon, by contrast, is now a veteran of open-space work. The United States Air Force lieutenant colonel and emergency physician arrived at the station in July aboard a Russian crew capsule, and Thursday was his fourth outing. Inside the station, two crewmates ran the robotic arm and helped the pair in and out of their suits, a division of labour that lets the spacewalkers focus entirely on the hardware in front of them.

The New Solar Wing joins a set of roll-out panels added over several years, and the upgrade changes what the station can do in its final chapter. Once the last panel is installed on a follow-up outing planned for early November, the station's available power should rise from about one hundred and sixty kilowatts to roughly two hundred and fifteen kilowatts. That extra capacity supports science experiments, life-support systems and, eventually, the controlled lowering of the station's orbit at the end of its life.

Why the power upgrade matters now

Power is the quiet constraint on everything the station attempts. Experiments, communications gear and cooling systems all draw from the same supply, and older panels that have spent years in harsh sunlight and temperature swings simply deliver less than they once did. The roll-out wings bolt onto the existing structure and shade parts of the older panels beneath them, yet the combination still delivers a large net gain because the new technology converts sunlight far more efficiently.

There is also a safety argument for finishing the job. A station with a healthy power margin can run its systems with room to spare, and that margin matters most during the delicate final phase of operations, when controllers must keep the laboratory stable while preparing to guide it down. Engineers have planned that controlled descent for around the turn of the decade, and the power upgrade is part of making sure the station stays fully functional until then.

The New Solar Wing will be followed by one more installation, after which the upgrade campaign that began several years ago will be complete. For the astronauts, though, the achievement is more immediate: a folded panel that launched as cargo is now a working part of the station, catching sunlight and feeding power into a laboratory that has hosted crews continuously for more than a quarter of a century.

Readers who follow the station's science can also catch up on a recent brain drug delivery breakthrough and on how off-grid solar now powers millions beyond the grid, while an ancient marine amphibian find shows how far back the story of life on Earth reaches. More detail on the spacewalk itself is available from NASA's station blog, which tracked the outing as it happened.