Astronauts complete prep for new ISS solar array on 1st NASA spacewalk in 10 months

Two NASA astronauts prepared the International Space Station (ISS) for the addition of a new solar array on the first U. S. Spacewalk in almost a year.

Expedition 74 crewmates Jessica Meir and Chris Williams ventured outside of the space station's Quest airlock at 8:52 a.m. EDT (1252 GMT) on Wednesday (March 18) to install a mount for an advanced power-producing solar panel. The pair worked on the left (or port) side of the space station's backbone truss, where they first assembled and then attached the bracket structure that will support an ISS Roll-Out Array (iROSA), to be installed on a future spacewalk.

Once unfurled, it will be the seventh of eight rollout arrays to be deployed since the upgrades began in 2021. The iROSA assemblies are smaller than the legacy four solar wings on the U. S.