Joshua Kutryk to Become Fifth Canadian Spacewalker

Kutryk to Become Fifth Canadian Spacewalker

CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk is scheduled to make two spacewalks at the International Space Station in the coming weeks to install new solar arrays, NASA said October 14. Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon will fit the station’s seventh and eighth roll-out solar arrays, finishing an upgrade that NASA says will raise the station’s power generation capacity by up to 30 per cent.

Kutryk will become the fifth Canadian to spacewalk and the first since David Saint-Jacques in 2019.

The two roll-out solar arrays arrived at the station on October 15 aboard a cargo spacecraft that lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on October 13. The vehicle carried more than 2,850 kilograms of food, supplies and research hardware to the orbiting laboratory.

Canadarm2 will play a central role in the spacewalk preparations. Ground controllers will use the robotic arm to lift the two arrays out of the cargo spacecraft’s trunk and park them on the station’s truss. During the spacewalks, the arm will serve as a platform for one of the two astronauts to stand on, the Canadian Space Agency said.

Kutryk and Menon were assigned to monitor the cargo spacecraft’s automated approach. Last week, Kutryk wore the CSA’s Bio-Monitor vest and headband, which track crew health data, and helped Menon clean a science freezer in Japan’s Kibo module. A day later he cleaned an experiment rack in Europe’s Columbus laboratory.

He also took questions from Canadian reporters in the CSA’s first live space-to-Earth news conference. He said he hopes Canadians see in the mission “a recipe for the future.”

The cargo mission also delivered hardware to grow artificial retinas and 3D heart-tissue models in weightlessness, material to study how a new type of glass forms without gravity, and brain organoids that NASA says could reveal treatment targets for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. Menon opened the hatch after docking, and he, Kutryk, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins and NASA astronaut Luke Delaney began moving samples into the station’s freezers and research racks, NASA said October 16.

Citations

Weekly ISS update: Kutryk to become fifth Canadian spacewalker — spaceq.ca

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