NASA spacewalkers finish installing roll-out solar array

Monitoring Desk

FLORIDA: Expedition 69 Flight Engineers Woody Hoburg and Steve Bowen of NASA concluded their spacewalk at 2:17 p.m. EDT after 5 hours and 35 minutes.

Hoburg and Bowen completed their major objective to install an IROSA (International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array) to augment power generation for the 1B power channel on the station’s starboard truss structure.

The new array is 60 feet long by 20 feet wide (18.2 meters by 6 meters) and is shading a little more than half of the original array, which is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide. Each new IROSA produces more than 20 kilowatts of electricity and together enable a 30% increase in power production over the station’s current arrays.

NASA and Boeing have a plan in place for a fourth set of roll-out arrays to further augment the International Space Station’s power supply. These arrays, which would be the seventh and eighth installed on space station, are targeted for delivery to the orbital outpost in 2025.

It was the 265th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, upgrades, and maintenance. The spacewalk marked the second for Hoburg and tenth for Bowen, tying him for the most spacewalks by a U.S. astronaut along with Mike Lopez-Alegria, Bob Behnken, Peggy Whitson, and Chris Cassidy.

Hoburg and Bowen are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.