Three ISS spacewalks prepare power upgrades and restore communications

At 12:27 UTC on Aug. 25, NASA astronaut Anil Menon and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot stepped through the Quest airlock into space. Six hours and 30 minutes later, a spare Space-to-Ground antenna was installed and connected to the International Space Station (ISS), after a failed unit had resisted removal during their previous outing. The repair closed a three-week run of three spacewalks by Expedition 75.

The first outing, on Aug. 6, prepared a 3B power channel for IROSAs, roll-out solar arrays designed to provide additional electricity for the station and its inhabitants. That power is intended to support critical systems, including life support, and eventually the ISS’s safe, controlled deorbit in the 2030s. The arrays themselves are still a future installation; the work completed so far is the electrical preparation.

The antenna repair showed the less tidy side of orbital maintenance. On Aug. 18, Adenot and Menon spent six hours and 23 minutes removing the failed Space-to-Ground unit, but difficult cables and bolts forced the installation to wait. They tied the old antenna down on the station’s truss, then returned on Aug. 25 to connect the spare and move the broken hardware to a spare-parts platform.

And then, concretely? The station now has a restored communications antenna, while a prepared power channel clears part of the path for more solar generation. For crews, that means maintaining communications and building additional electrical margin for systems that keep the laboratory habitable. The work restores a communications link and prepares the station for additional power.

The crew’s schedule also included a Nevada Screening Vision system, which uses virtual-reality goggles to test visual acuity and contrast sensitivity; EasyMotion-2, an electro-muscle stimulation suit that triggers muscle contractions; and ClimCam hardware for real-time Earth imagery focused on Eastern Africa, weather and agriculture. Doctors monitored vein scans for blood-flow anomalies and clots. NASA’s next station mission, Crew-13, is scheduled to launch no earlier than Sept. 12.