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International Space Station

Thursday Spacewalk Preps Continue, Crew Installs Advanced Earth Imaging Gear

The International Space Station was soaring 262 miles above southern India at approximately 1:34 a.m. local time when this long‑duration photograph was taken, revealing a bright atmospheric glow and a starry night sky. At left is the Prichal module, attached to the Nauka science module on the orbital outpost’s Roscosmos segment.
The International Space Station was soaring 262 miles above Earth when this long‑duration photograph was taken, revealing a bright atmospheric glow and a starry night sky.
NASA/Chris Williams

The Expedition 75 crew continued preparing for a spacewalk scheduled for Thursday to augment the International Space Station’s power system. The orbital residents also installed advanced Earth observation hardware, continued space exercise research, and kept up lab maintenance.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon, station commander and flight engineer respectively, worked throughout Tuesday configuring tools and studying procedures for a spacewalk set to begin at 8:35 a.m. EDT on Thursday. The duo will spend about seven hours building a modification kit on the station’s Starboard 6 truss segment where a roll out solar array will be installed later this year. NASA+ and a variety of other platforms will stream live spacewalk coverage beginning at 7 a.m.

Flight engineers Jack Hathaway of NASA and Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) joined in the spacewalking procedure reviews since they will monitor the spacewalkers from inside the orbital outpost. Hathaway and Adenot will also assist Meir and Menon in and out of their spacesuits on Thursday.

Hathaway was back on exercise research in the Columbus laboratory module evaluating the effectiveness of the new European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D). Hathaway worked out his upper and lower body on the E4D to test the gear for use on future space exploration missions. He also installed the ClimCam hardware that analyzes real-time Earth imagery captured for monitoring weather and climate changes. ClimCam will be robotically placed outside the space station to demonstrate small, intelligent camera systems that reduce reliance on ground-based image processing.

Adenot began her shift filming a pair of education videos for elementary and junior high school students. The first video highlighted how microgravity affects an astronaut’s height. Next, she filmed a video describing how critical thinking, cooperation, and creativity are necessary for living and working in space. She later assisted Hathaway with the smart camera installation job inside the Kibo laboratory module.

Roscosmos flight engineers Andrey Fedyaev and Pyotr Dubrov also worked on Earth observation hardware installing an imaging device in the Zvezda service module to photograph landmarks across Eastern Europe and Central Asia in multiple wavelengths. The different spectral signatures track the effects of storms, volcanic eruptions, and more informing proper emergency responses on Earth. Flight engineer Anna Kikina spent her Tuesday shift organizing and stowing hardware located inside the Zarya module.

NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who ended a 241-day space research mission on July 26, 2026, talked about his experiences living and working on the space station during his post-flight news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 4. Williams described the sensation of spacewalking, the variety of space science he conducted, and mentioned Earth’s “beauty, its connectedness, and its fragility.”

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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