LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk conducted their spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday to install the station's eighth and final roll-out solar array.
The spacewalk started at 8:36 a.m. Eastern Time and lasted about seven hours. During the mission, Menon and Kutryk installed and deployed the ISS Roll-Out Solar Array on the 3B channel of the space station, completing a series of upgrades to augment the station's power generation capacity.
Work to upgrade the station's power system began in February 2021. Since then, astronauts have conducted 18 spacewalks to prepare the station's power channels and install the roll-out solar arrays. Together, the arrays are expected to increase the station's power generation capacity from 160 kilowatts to approximately 215 kilowatts, according to NASA.
It was Menon's fifth spacewalk and Kutryk's second. It was also the 286th spacewalk in support of ISS assembly, maintenance, and upgrades, NASA said. ■
