Final Solar Array to Be Installed Thursday on the Space Station: Seven-Hour Spacewalk Completes Power Upgrade
Expedition 75 aboard the International Space Station continued preparations on November 3 for this week's spacewalk: Canadian Space Agency flight engineer Joshua Kutryk and NASA flight engineer Anil Menon organized tools, inspected tethers and reviewed procedures for a spacewalk scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, November 5. It will be the second and final spacewalk in a series to upgrade the station's power generation system.
During the roughly seven-hour excursion, the pair will install the eighth and final roll-out solar array on the station's starboard truss. The job completes a years-long upgrade that began in June 2021 and raises the station's power generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts. NASA+ and other streaming platforms will begin continuous live coverage at 7 a.m. EST on Thursday.
NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney also studied Thursday's procedures: they will help Kutryk and Menon in and out of their spacesuits, monitor the spacewalkers and operate the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Delaney also pedaled on the Destiny laboratory module's exercise cycle wearing the Bio-Monitor's sensor vest and headband, measuring how the cardiorespiratory system adapts to weightlessness to inform crew health measures for future missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
On cargo work, Delaney joined Menon and Watkins in swapping payloads inside a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft that docked to the Harmony module on October 15; Dragon is expected to return to Earth in mid-November packed with completed science experiments and station hardware. In the Roscosmos segment, station commander Pyotr Dubrov installed Earth observation gear, while flight engineers Sergey Teteryatnikov and Anna Kikina completed a 24-hour heart and blood-pressure monitoring session and transferred water from the Progress 96 cargo ship and inspected Zvezda ventilation systems, respectively.
(Source: NASA)
Source: NASA
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：SpaceX Dragon 货运飞船接近国际空间站。NASA Johnson 航天中心摄，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft approaches the International Space Station. Photo by NASA Johnson Space Center, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
