Anil Menon installs station’s seventh roll-out solar array with Kutryk

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk installed and deployed the International Space Station’s seventh roll-out solar array on October 29, 2026. NASA’s completion report and Space.com’s account both document the installation on the station’s 2A electrical power channel, advancing the work beyond the go-ahead reported on October 28.

The spacewalk lasted seven hours and 11 minutes and ended at 3:08 p.m. EDT on October 29, NASA and Space.com report. That was 12:38 a.m. IST on October 30. It was Menon’s fourth spacewalk and Kutryk’s first.

Menon carried the rolled-up array to the port-side worksite while riding the Canadarm2 robotic arm, Space.com’s Robert Z. Pearlman reports. Kutryk travelled along the station’s truss to join him. After the astronauts secured the array and connected its electrical cables, its rolled carbon-composite booms supplied the energy to unfurl the panel without a motor.

Menon is an Indian-origin NASA astronaut. NASA’s biography states that he was born and raised in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants.

NASA says the new array adds power for station operations, including a safe and controlled deorbit. The agency projects that all eight roll-out arrays together will increase available power by up to 30%, from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts; that figure describes the completed upgrade, rather than a measured result from this spacewalk alone.

The astronauts also completed preparatory tasks for their next spacewalk, NASA records. They are scheduled to install the eighth and final roll-out array on the 3B electrical power channel on November 5. That installation, and completion of the station’s power-system augmentation, remain ahead.