ISS spacewalks on Oct 29 and Nov 5 will finish the solar upgrade

The International Space Station's long power upgrade is nearly done. NASA says flight engineers Anil Menon (NASA) and Joshua Kutryk (Canadian Space Agency) will make two spacewalks, on 29 October and 5 November, to install a final pair of roll-out solar arrays on the station's truss. When the work is finished, NASA expects the station's power generation capability to rise by up to 30 percent.

Where the arrays came from

These are the last of the ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs), flexible panels that unroll like a carpet and sit in front of the station's original wings. The final pair flew up on the SpaceX CRS-35 cargo Dragon earlier this month: see our CRS-35 preview and the report on Dragon's docking.

How the crew is getting ready

On Wednesday, Menon and Kutryk worked in the Quest airlock, sorting tools, inspecting tethers and cleaning the helmets they will wear. They then fitted two spacesuits with communications gear and medical monitoring hardware ahead of a suit fit check on Thursday. Fit checks matter because astronauts' bodies change in microgravity. NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney reviewed how they will help the spacewalkers in and out of the suits, and all four studied the steps to retrieve the arrays and install them.

Kyiv times take into account that Ukraine and the US both switch from summer time before the spacewalks (Ukraine on 25 October, the US on 1 November).

Science keeps going

The rest of the crew kept up research. Menon processed green algae and cultured tobacco cells for the Plant Cell Division study in Japan's Kibo lab, which looks at how crops could be grown on the Moon and Mars. Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina wore an acoustic sensor that records breathing sounds, to study how microgravity affects the airways.

Spacewalk timings can slip, so check NASA's live coverage on the day.