Astronauts Install the Last New Solar Array on the Space Station

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk installed the eighth and final roll-out solar array on the International Space Station on Nov. 5, 2026, and unfurled it on the station's 3B power channel. NASA said the installation completes the power upgrades the agency began in February 2021.

Together, the roll-out arrays raise the station's power generation capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts. NASA calls that work power augmentation, meaning the arrays add to what the station can generate. Each one is unrolled in place after it is installed, which is where the name comes from.

A power channel is one of the circuits the station's electricity runs on, and each had equipment to prepare before an array could be fitted to it. NASA's space station blog put the whole campaign at 18 spacewalks, flown both to ready that equipment and to install the arrays themselves. Menon and Kutryk were outside for just under seven hours to fit the last one, which unfurled on the starboard side of the station's truss structure, the backbone that carries its arrays.

Menon and Kutryk also installed the seventh array on another of the station's power channels earlier in the same series of spacewalks.