NASA has cleared a crew spacewalk outside the International Space Station for Thursday, when two astronauts will install the final of eight roll-out solar arrays. The work is designed to raise the station's electrical capacity from about 160 kilowatts to roughly 215 kilowatts, giving the orbiting laboratory more room to run its experiments and systems.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon will leave the station's Quest airlock for a spacewalk expected to last about seven hours, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. The pair will attach the array to the far end of the starboard truss, the lattice structure that carries the station's power-generating wings. The job repeats tasks carried out on an October 29 spacewalk, but on the opposite side of the truss.
Menon will ride the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm while holding the array, then hand it off to Kutryk for installation. Crew members have already readied their tools and staged their spacesuits, and mission control has completed a spacewalk readiness review. NASA plans to begin live coverage at 7 a.m. on its NASA+ streaming service.
The solar upgrade has been a long effort. Work on the power system began in June 2021, and the arrays are being added in stages to expand the station's generating capacity. Completing the eighth and final array marks the end of that program.
The spacewalk is not the only research under way aboard the station. Kutryk and Menon have been studying microbes on station surfaces and in its water supply, while astronaut Jessica Watkins is sampling bacteria to track antibiotic resistance. Separately, Jonny Kim's colleague Sarah Delaney is growing human lung cells in microgravity, work that scientists hope will help them understand lung disease.