Human Spaceflight

Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk prepare emergency spacewalk jetpacks

NASA’s October 26 station log records fuel, battery and thruster checks with Joshua Kutryk. Their solar-array installation remains scheduled for October 29.

27 October 2026 at 9:58 am ISTBy Mission Desk2 min read

Updated 27 October 2026 at 9:58 am IST: Follow-up: NASA’s October 26 log adds emergency-jetpack checks and Canadarm2 preparation to the October 20 tools and tether work previously reported. The October 29 spacewalk remains planned.

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The International Space Station’s solar arrays above city lights in the southern United States, in the NASA photograph accompanying its October 26 operations log. This image identifies the station’s power hardware; it does not show the jetpack checks or the planned October 29 installation. Credit: NASA.

Anil Menon and Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk checked their emergency spacesuit jetpacks aboard the International Space Station on October 26, 2026, according to NASA’s daily operations log. The checks covered fuel quantity, battery power and thruster functionality ahead of their planned solar-array spacewalk.

NASA’s account also records a robotics preparation session involving Menon, Kutryk, Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney. They familiarized themselves with the Canadarm2 movements needed for the installation: Menon is to ride the robotic arm with the rolled-up array to the worksite, while Kutryk moves along the station’s truss using tethers.

The new jetpack checks and robotics session follow the tools and tether preparation reported here from NASA’s October 20 log. That earlier entry described Menon configuring tools and inspecting tethers in the Quest airlock; the October 26 entry adds checks of emergency equipment and the planned arm movements.

Menon is an Indian-origin NASA astronaut. His agency biography records that he was born and raised in Minneapolis to Ukrainian and Indian immigrants and joined NASA’s 2021 astronaut class.

NASA schedules Menon and Kutryk to leave the Quest airlock at 8 a.m. EDT on October 29 to install a roll-out solar array on the station’s port-side truss. The agency plans a six-hour, 45-minute spacewalk, with Watkins and Delaney helping with suits and the robotic arm. The October 26 log documents preparation; the installation remains ahead.

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