Canada just helped wrap up a five-year upgrade on the International Space Station (ISS).
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk was lead spacewalker today (Nov. 5) on his second excursion outside the ISS, barely a month after his Oct. 1 arrival at the orbiting complex.
Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon—on his fifth spacewalk—worked together outside the space station to deploy and unfurl the last of eight new solar arrays on ISS, overcoming temporary power-up issues to wrap up installations ongoing for five years and at least a decade of work overall.
“It was a good one,” Kutryk said just before 3:30 p.m. EST in the final minutes of the 6-hour, 59-minute spacewalk, as he and Menon were inside the ISS Quest airlock. “It was so impressive to see the team respond, and get us to where we needed to be, despite the challenges that we encountered along the way.”
Kutryk, calling the spacewalk an “absolute, absolute privilege,” said the teamwork on the ground and in space “really shows out here when you’re in the suit hanging over the Earth,” and gave special thanks to Houston, Mission Control, CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons (capcom on the spacewalk) and others.
Menon gave extensive remarks of his own, including praise for all the help: “We had a plan. We changed that plan, and the teams down there did such an incredible job pivoting, and we got it done.”
Power upgrades
The first elements of the ISS launched in 1998—the station just passed 26 years of continuous occupation on Nov. 2, by coincidence—which means that the original solar arrays are decades old, and naturally losing power with age. A newer set of IROSAs (ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays), built by Redwire Space under contract to Boeing, NASA’s prime contractor for station operations, simply put, bolt on top of the older arrays. NASA has said the eight newer arrays will collectively boost ISS power by up to 30 per cent, from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts.
The IROSA installations are hugely complex, and the teams briefly encountered (but resolved) power-flow issues during the cable connection. Aside from that, the spacewalking team worked well. After the spacewalkers exited at 8:36 a.m. EST, the astronauts, ISS crew and ground teams were ahead of timeline for the early part of the extravehicular activity (EVA) until the power issues arose, but were able to wrap up the work with consumables to spare.
The installation task involved several steps. The IROSA was removed from its temporary station holding area and handed to Menon, while Menon was on a platform attached to Canadarm2. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney then worked together to hoist Menon near the installation site on Canadarm2 while Kutryk moved, with tethers, hand-over-hand over the station to reach the area.
Kutryk next installed himself on a station platform and took hold of IROSA, before Menon left his Canadarm2 perch, “leapfrogged” over him, and secured himself to the station to also grapple IROSA—readying to complete the installation in a zone just slightly beyond the robotic arm’s reach. Once the array was unfurled, astronauts then worked to complete cable connections and other cleanup before heading back to the airlock.
Kutryk’s first spacewalk on Oct. 29 put in the seventh solar array alongside Menon. Kutryk’s initial excursion made him the fifth CSA astronaut to spacewalk, after Chris Hadfield (2001), Steven MacLean (2006), Dave Williams (2007) and David Saint-Jacques (2019), and marked the first CSA EVA in more than seven years. Kutryk, now with two excursions outside totalling about 14 hours, sits one spacewalk and about three and a half hours behind the Canadian record set by Williams’ three EVAs, which total 17 hours and 47 minutes.
While Kutryk and Menon were the astronauts featured on-screen, the team supporting them is vast. Some examples include the rest of the ISS crew, as well as ISS Mission Control. Notably, Gibbons was the ground intravehicular support for five previous IROSA spacewalks, and also served as capcom during the last EVA on Oct. 29. (Gibbons’ mission experience also includes serving as backup to Artemis II and lunar capcom for Artemis II, and Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly told SpaceQ in September she hopes to see measurable progress on a mission for Gibbons within the next year.)
Some words from the Canadarm2 robotics controllers
But another important part of the team was the group of ground controllers for Canadarm2, which includes representatives from CSA headquarters in Longueuil, Que. On Friday (Oct. 30), SpaceQ was on site at CSA for an ISS downlink, and spoke with two of the Canadarm2 operators there: Roxanne Côté-Bigras, and Stephen Takacs.
There are several levels of robotics certifications. Takacs, at the basic level, has duties on-console including guiding the team through the procedures, making sure the tasks are being done on timeline, and ensuring the CSA team is in alignment with the Mission Control team in Houston. Takacs also controls the cameras on Canadarm2.
Takacs focuses on the health, monitoring and geometry of the system while Côté-Bigras—a more senior “robo” or robotics officer—responds to the flight director, and is in charge of the rest of the robotics team. Controllers at every certification level must have an engineering degree of some kind, although examples can vary from aerospace, to mechanical, to electrical.
Basic on-job training involves going to Houston to train with the newest cohort of flight controllers; that duty may last between four months and three years, depending on the training requirements. But once that training is finished, “there’s virtually no difference between the job … in Houston and the job we do. Canada has the same amount of capability in the control room,” said Côté-Bigras. She said one of the main reasons the training takes place in Houston is to “foster connections with the Americans.”
While neither of the controllers was directly involved with the current IROSA spacewalks, Takacs will be directly supporting at least one EVA in January that will be doing upgrades and repairs to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The robotics team, Takacs said, has been extensively preparing for the AMS work.
“We will go to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab that’s in Houston to help to follow along with the prep they do,” Takacs said, referring to the large pool facility near NASA’s Johnson Space Center where astronauts practice spacewalks underwater in spacesuits using a full-scale model of part of the ISS.
“There’s a fake arm underneath the water, that we’ll follow along the trajectories that we think work, and then slowly will massage the mission design to be perfect for the day,” he added. “Then we’ll also follow the crew’s training, as well, to make sure that we understand their level of competency.”
Long-time readers of SpaceQ will likely remember a Canadian connection with AMS; Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen, before that CSA moon-mission selection, helped develop the tools and procedures for the initial set of four AMS spacewalks in 2019-20—said to be the most complex since the Hubble Space Telescope upgrades and repairs.
While NASA has not yet revealed who will be the spacewalkers for the new AMS work, Kutryk will still be on station if they run in January—allowing him the possibility to do the AMS EVAs directly, or perhaps participate by serving as part of the intravehicular (IV) team in the ISS. If Kutryk is to be controlling Canadarm2 during those spacewalks, he will use a simulator in-orbit for refresher training to practice the motion of the arm.
Côté-Bigras, meanwhile, is readying for the berthing of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft launching no earlier than Nov. 29. Astronauts in the ISS will do the berthing using Canadarm2, although again, who will be responsible has not been revealed yet. Kutryk did observe the autonomous docking of the SpaceX CRS-35 Dragon cargo spacecraft on Oct. 15, so if tasked, he does have some related in-space experience to draw upon.
When Côté-Bigras and Takacs were asked by SpaceQ if there were any media misconceptions about robotics that they would like to address, they emphasized that usually, these days it is not the crew driving the robotics. Rather, it is the teams on the ground; CSA actually has a hand in this work for well over 100 days a year.
Astronauts are usually called upon only at the most crucial moments with short communication times, such as manipulating crew members during spacewalks or performing berthings. By contrast, the robotics team will often operate during the sleep period, although the crew always gets a briefing in the morning saying where things have moved.
Canadarm recognized by Canadian government
Canadarm2’s participation in Thursday’s spacewalk comes just a day after Canadarm’s historic first-ever space deployment on STS-2 in 1981 was recognized by the Canadian government. Ceremony attendees at a plaque unveiling at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa included retired CSA astronauts Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk, as well as current CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques.
Payette and Thirsk operated Canadarm and Canadarm2, respectively; Thirsk also used Canadarm2 for the first Canadian ISS berthing, of Japan’s HTV-1 cargo ship in 2009. Saint-Jacques was the first CSA astronaut to use Canadarm2 to capture a visiting spacecraft, while NASA astronaut Drew Feustel, a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, was the first Canadian to do so overall. Retired CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield, not in attendance, was the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm, and also co-installed Canadarm2 in 2001 on the ISS during spacewalks with NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski.