Joshua Kutryk’s spacewalk got underway as planned on Thursday, making him the fifth Canadian astronaut to perform such a feat.
Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon placed their suits on battery power and began their spacewalk at 7:57 a.m. EDT. They will be working to install solar panels on part of the International Space Station, which was nearly 420 kilometres above the Earth when they stepped into space.
Their spacewalk was expected to last nearly seven hours.
Astronauts inside the station wished Kutryk and Menon luck before they left the airlock.
“From Luke (Delaney) and I on the other side of the hatch, good luck. We’re proud of you and we’ll see you on the other side,” NASA flight engineer Jessica Watkins told them.
Kutryk was on his first mission in space and his trip outside the space station was expected to be his first of two spacewalks.
Kutryk and Menon departed from the Quest airlock module on the space station to install solar panels on the portside truss structure of the orbital outpost.
The truss serves as the station’s structural backbone and supports major systems, including solar wings, radiators, power, data and temperature-control equipment.
Watkins and Delaney, also a NASA flight engineer, will assist the spacewalkers with the Canadarm 2 robotic arm.
Before Kutryk, the last Canadian to perform a spacewalk was David Saint-Jacques in 2019.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2026.
By Erika Morris
