Two astronauts spent seven hours and 11 minutes outside the International Space Station to install and deploy a new solar array. NASA’s Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk completed the work on October 29, successfully adding the seventh of eight planned roll-out arrays.
The technology gives the station another way to capture sunlight and turn it into electricity. Once all eight arrays are installed, NASA expects the upgrade to increase available power by up to 30%, raising generation capacity from 160 to approximately 215 kilowatts. That full increase remains a target for the completed system; the latest confirmed achievement is the seventh installation. The astronauts also prepared equipment for the final array, scheduled for a November 5 spacewalk.
For Kutryk, the successful outing was his first spacewalk. A November 1 report from SpaceQ noted that he became the fifth Canadian to work outside a spacecraft. Beyond that personal milestone, the installation is a tangible engineering result: new hardware unfolded and working in orbit. The next step is already planned, with NASA intending to broadcast the final installation so people on Earth can watch the upgrade take shape.
