Astronauts Install the Space Station's Eighth and Final Roll-Out Solar Array in a 7-Hour Spacewalk

The pair also came in a little faster than a week earlier: 6 hours 59 minutes against 7 hours 11 minutes for the 2A channel array. NASA live-streamed the work on NASA+ and other platforms from 7am Eastern, an hour and a half before the spacewalk began. In its account of the day NASA describes the work as completing the station's power augmentation upgrades, with no further arrays planned.

Why does the space station need more power?

The arrays add power for the station's critical operations, including, NASA says, a safe and controlled deorbit at the end of its life. The agency expects the full set to lift output by up to 30%, from 160 kilowatts to about 215.

The previous array, the seventh, went onto the 2A power channel on 29 October in a spacewalk that lasted 7 hours and 11 minutes and was US spacewalk 100, according to NASA's account of that day. It was Menon's fourth outing and Kutryk's first, so the same two men have now done the job twice in seven days.

What happens on the space station next?

With the upgrade finished, the crew returns to routine research. NASA's preview described the days before the spacewalk as spent on tools, suits and procedures, alongside microbiology and biotechnology experiments, with Expedition 75 commander Pyotr Dubrov and cosmonauts Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov also aboard. NASA's blog does not set out what comes next for spacewalks, and no date for the next one has been given. For now, the station has more generating capacity than at any point in its upgrade programme.