Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk is scheduled to make two spacewalks at the International Space Station in the next few weeks to install new solar arrays, NASA said Oct. 14. A SpaceX cargo ship delivered the arrays a day later.
Power upgrade
Kutryk and NASA’s Anil Menon will fit the station’s seventh and eighth roll-out solar arrays, finishing an upgrade that NASA says will raise the station’s power generation capacity by up to 30 per cent. Kutryk will become the fifth Canadian to spacewalk and the first since David Saint-Jacques in 2019. Read our story on the two spacewalks and the arrays they will install.
Dragon delivers final arrays
NASA’s 35th SpaceX commercial resupply mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Oct. 13 and docked to the station’s Harmony module two days later with more than 2,850 kilograms (6,300 pounds) of food, supplies and research hardware.
Besides the arrays, Dragon carried hardware to grow artificial retinas and 3D heart-tissue models in weightlessness, material to study how a new type of glass forms without gravity, and brain organoids that NASA says could reveal treatment targets for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis.
Menon opened the hatch after docking, and he, Kutryk and NASA’s Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney began moving samples into the station’s freezers and research racks, NASA said Oct. 16.
Canada’s week
Canadarm2 robotic arm has work to do before the spacewalks. Ground controllers will use Canadarm2 to lift the two arrays out of Dragon’s trunk and park them on the station’s truss. On the spacewalks, the arm will serve as a platform for one of the two astronauts to stand on, the Canadian Space Agency said.
Kutryk and Menon were assigned to monitor Dragon’s automated approach. Earlier in the week, Kutryk wore the CSA’s Bio-Monitor vest and headband, which track crew health data, and helped Menon clean a science freezer in Japan’s Kibo module, according to NASA’s Oct. 13 mission log. A day later he cleaned an experiment rack in Europe’s Columbus laboratory.
He also took questions from Canadian reporters in the CSA’s first live space-to-Earth news conference. He said he hopes Canadians see in the mission “a recipe for the future.” Our full report from the news conference has more.
Science and technology experiments
Ahead of Dragon’s arrival, the station’s four NASA and CSA astronauts took eye exams in the Harmony module, peering into medical-imaging gear while doctors on the ground watched their retinas, corneas and lenses in real time. NASA says the results could show how long missions affect vision and the shape of the eye.
As Dragon is unpacked, the crew is starting up new studies. They include protein crystals grown in orbit to help develop more precise cancer treatments, and plants observed for how their genes respond to microgravity, research aimed at better spacecraft life support.
In the station’s Russian segment, cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina wrapped up a weeklong run of Teledroid, an experiment in which crew members wear an exoskeleton suit and virtual-reality goggles to control robots remotely. Sergey Teteryatnikov, the fourth member of Crew-13, updated software on a laptop in the Zvezda module that controls the European robotic arm, which arrived with Russia’s Nauka module in 2021. He also took part in a separate virtual-reality study testing how his sense of balance is adapting to life in orbit.
Looking ahead
NASA will preview the spacewalks at a news conference from Johnson Space Center in Houston at 2 p.m. EDT on Oct. 20. Kutryk and Menon go outside on Oct. 29 for U.S. spacewalk 100, then on Nov. 5 for spacewalk 101. The cargo Dragon is due to leave in mid-November with time-critical research.