Expedition 74 Prepares First 2026 Spacewalk to Ready Station for New Solar Arrays

The Expedition 74 crew is preparing for the first spacewalk of 2026 this week as two astronauts work to ready the International Space Station for new roll-out solar arrays. NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman are scheduled to exit the station’s Quest airlock at 8 a.m. EST on Thursday for a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.

They will install a modification kit and route cables on the station’s port side truss to prepare for a roll-out solar array arriving on an upcoming cargo mission, and will also install jumper cables, photograph station hardware, and swab external surfaces to collect potential microorganism samples.

Fincke and Cardman reviewed procedures and confirmed readiness with mission controllers alongside NASA astronaut Chris Williams and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui. Williams and Yui will assist the spacewalkers with suit donning and doffing, airlock pressurization and depressurization, and will monitor the crew during the spacewalks.

The pair also checked their suit emergency jetpacks. Crew members carried out other station work on Monday, including protein crystal sample processing in the Destiny laboratory for the Pharmaceutical In-Space Laboratory experiments, cargo transfers inside the SpaceX Dragon vehicle, packing items for the NanoRacks Bishop airlock, and medical and life-support inventories.

Key Topics

Science, International Space Station, Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, Roll-out Solar Arrays, Spacex Dragon