The spacewalk assembled the modification kit for one of the station’s eight power channels, allowing for the future addition of an ISS Roll-Out Solar Array, or iROSA. Since 2021, astronauts on prior spacewalks have deployed six of the iROSA assemblies. The iROSA wings sit forward of the legacy solar arrays, augmenting their electricity generation rather than replacing it. The station’s eight original arrays began showing degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life.<\/p>\n
Meir and Menon assembled and bolted together triangular brackets on the 3B power channel, located on the far starboard S6 segment of the station’s backbone truss. Menon worked from an articulating portable foot restraint atop a worksite interface, giving him a stable angle. Once the structure was secured to the 3B mast canister, the pair routed cabling to carry electricity from the future iROSA into the 3B power channel, then covered the struts with multi-layer insulation to protect against micrometeoroid strikes. The other channel still awaiting an iROSA is 2A on the port side.<\/p>\n
The spacewalk began at 8:33 a.m. EDT when Meir and Menon switched their spacesuits to internal battery power, and concluded at 3:00 p.m. EDT, 6 hours and 27 minutes later. It was the 96th U.S. extravehicular activity and 281st spacewalk overall in support of the station. It was Menon’s first career spacewalk and Meir’s sixth, bringing her total EVA time to 42 hours and 33 minutes. Mission managers had given the crew a go the previous day.<\/p>\n
During a break, the astronauts noted the Moon and the Artemis program. “I can see a future moon base there,” Menon said. Meir closed the day by marking the anniversary of Curiosity’s 2012 Mars landing. “One day, humans will visit Curiosity, propelled by the groundbreaking science, technology demonstrations and operations conducted here on the International Space Station for almost 26 years now,” she said. “Today, we made one more step toward expanding the ISS power system, further sustaining our human presence in low Earth orbit, as we prepare to take those next steps.”<\/p>\n
When used in tandem with the new iROSA wings, the upgraded system will increase the station’s electricity supply by 20% to 30%. The array this hardware will support is one of several upgrades intended to keep the ISS viable through the end of the decade, buying time while commercial station replacements remain years away.<\/p>\n
Two more U.S. spacewalks are scheduled this month. EVA 97 on August 13 will replace a space-to-ground antenna. EVA 98 on August 25 will connect power channel cables and data relay systems as part of ongoing maintenance, including preparations for the station’s future deorbit, and will replace a navigational aid used for spacecraft docking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The spacewalk assembled the modification kit for one of the station’s eight power channels, allowing for the future addition of an ISS Roll-Out Solar Array, or iROSA. Since 2021, astronauts on prior spacewalks have deployed six of the iROSA assemblies. The iROSA wings sit forward of the legacy solar arrays, augmenting their electricity generation rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}