Technology
ISS: Menon and Kutryk install the eighth and final roll-out solar array – what changes for the station
NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canada’s Joshua Kutryk installed the eighth and last ISS Roll-Out Solar Array during a six-hour, 59-minute spacewalk, raising the station’s power capacity by up to 30%.
The upgrade of the International Space Station’s (ISS) electrical system is complete. On Thursday, November 5, 2026, NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canada’s Joshua Kutryk installed and unfurled outside the orbiting laboratory the eighth and final roll-out solar array of the station, known as IROSA (ISS Roll-Out Solar Array). NASA announced that the spacewalk lasted six hours and 59 minutes.
Mr Kutryk belongs to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The two men left the station’s airlock at 8:36 a.m. US Eastern time, which is 15:36 in Greece, and finished the task at 3:35 p.m., or 22:35 Greek time. The new array went into power channel 3B, at the far end of the station’s starboard truss, the metal backbone structure on which the solar arrays are mounted.
Up to 30% more power
The most important element is power. Together, the eight arrays raise the station’s generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts, an increase NASA puts at up to 30%. The effort began in 2021 and since then 18 spacewalks have been carried out to prepare the power channels and install the eight arrays.
Thursday’s spacewalk was No. 101 in the series of US spacewalks. For Mr Menon it was the fifth, for Mr Kutryk the second, and in total spacewalks for assembling, maintaining and upgrading the station it was the 286th. A week earlier, on October 29, the same pair had installed the seventh array on power channel 2A, on the port side of the truss, in a spacewalk of seven hours and 11 minutes. They also did preparatory work then for the final outing.
On Wednesday NASA had described the plan: the astronauts would repeat almost the same steps as on October 29, on the opposite side of the station. Mr Menon, secured to the Canadarm2 robotic arm, would carry the array and hand it to Mr Kutryk, who would have moved along the truss. Mr Menon would then detach from the arm and go to the installation point, where Mr Kutryk would return the array to him so that they could complete the installation together.
How the IROSA works
The IROSA arrays were designed, built and tested by Redwire, under a contract from Boeing, and are about half the size of the station’s older solar arrays. They are launched rolled up in a cylinder and, once in place, unroll like a yoga mat, with a self-contained system limiting the risks during deployment. The technology was tested on the station in 2017. The first two arrays arrived in 2021 in the unpressurised trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, on the CRS-22 resupply mission. Six were installed by 2023, and power projections led to a request for a new batch of arrays, also launched on Dragon, on the CRS-35 mission.
NASA notes that the seventh array will support critical functions, among them the safe, controlled descent of the station from orbit (deorbit), while solar electricity powers the life-support systems and hundreds of experiments at an altitude of about 400 kilometres (250 miles) above Earth.
On Wednesday NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney went over with the two astronauts the robotic manoeuvres that would support the spacewalk. The Expedition 75 crew also includes the three cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov (station commander), Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov.