NRI Anil Menon, Engineer, join NASA astronauts Jessica Meir,
for spacewalk to upgrade solar array-space station
Los Angeles, August 7, 2026
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh
NASA astronaut Anil Menon, Mechanical Engineering and an M.D., Emergency Medicine and in Aerospace Medicine, along with his colleague Jessica Meir, NASA astronauts have been given the go by mission managers for Thursday’s spacewalk to prepare the International Space Station for future upgrades to its power system. The spacewalkers will spend about seven hours in the vacuum of space building a modification kit on the station’s Starboard 6 truss segment where a roll out solar array is slated to be installed later this year.
Meir and Menon spent Wednesday inside the Quest airlock finalizing tool configurations, staging spacesuits, and reviewing procedures for the spacewalk set to begin at 8:35 a.m. EDT on Thursday. Flight engineers Jck Hathaway of NASA and Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) helped out with the last-minute spacesuit configurations then brushed up with the duo on the spacewalk procedures. Hathaway and Adenot will assist Meir and Menon in and out of their spacesuits and monitor the spacewalking activities on Thursday. NASA and a variety of other platforms will stream live spacewalk coverage beginning at 7 a.m.
Hathaway and Adenot also continued their futuristic workout studies on the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device located in the Columbus laboratory module. The duo took turns exercising in a seated position to evaluate the E4D’s effectiveness for use on missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
The three cosmonauts from Roscosmos aboard the orbiting lab stayed focused Wednesday on their task list of Earth observation studies, hardware inventories, and lab inspections. Flight engineers Andrey Fedyaev and Pyotr Dubrov partnered together configuring multi-wavelength imagery hardware for another automated overnight session to photograph Asian and North American lakes and mountains. Fedyaev also took inventory of hardware that supports spacecraft dockings on the station’s Roscosmos modules. Dubrov joined flight engineer Anna Kikina for hull inspections inside the Zvezda service module.
NASA said in a statement."This work will enable the future installation of roll-out solar arrays, called IROSA, to provide additional power for the orbiting laboratory, supporting critical systems and the safe, controlled deorbit of the space station,"Since 2021, astronauts on prior spacewalks have deployed six of the International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (IROSA) assemblies, leaving now just two awaiting delivery to the station later this year.
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