Friday, August 7, 2026.
Yesterday, at 12:33 UTC, two astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station and stayed outside for six hours and twenty-seven minutes. Jessica Meir — on her sixth spacewalk, commander of the orbital outpost since late July — and Anil Menon — on his first, though his second flight — prepped the station's 3B power channel for the future installation of a new roll-out solar array. By NASA's count, the walk was the 281st in support of ISS assembly and maintenance. It was an ordinary Thursday on orbit. That ordinariness is the headline.
The crew performing it has been aboard for 175 days. SpaceX Crew-12 launched on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral's SLC-40 on February 13 at 10:15 UTC, with Meir commanding, Jack Hathaway piloting, and ESA's Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos's Andrey Fedyaev as mission specialists. Dragon Freedom docked to Harmony on February 14. The crew joined Expedition 74 and rode it into Expedition 75 when Soyuz MS-28 undocked on July 26. Two more US spacewalks are on the August calendar — August 13 to replace a space-to-ground antenna, August 25 to finish the power-channel cabling — and Crew-13 is scheduled no earlier than mid-September. The cadence is no longer an event. It is the shape of the program.
NASA Space Station Blog — Spacewalk Begins for Solar Array Modifications (Aug 6, 2026)