Astronauts cleared for the spacewalk that installs the eighth and final roll-out solar array on the space station

4 November 2026

NASA has cleared Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Anil Menon of NASA for the spacewalk that completes the International Space Station's power upgrade. The two will install the eighth and final roll-out solar array at the far end of the starboard truss structure. Menon will carry the array while attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm, and the pair will hand it off to finish the installation. The spacewalk is planned to last about seven hours. The upgrade began in June 2021 and raises the station's generating capacity from about 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts. The same tasks were carried out on an earlier spacewalk in late October. Before the walk the two astronauts readied tools, staged their spacesuits in the Quest airlock and joined a readiness conference with mission controllers, while other crew members carried on microbiology and biotechnology research.