NASA mission managers gave astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon the go-ahead for a spacewalk planned for Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, according to the agency's report published Aug. 5. The roughly seven-hour spacewalk was to prepare the International Space Station for future power-system upgrades, building a modification kit on the Starboard 6 truss segment where a roll-out solar array was slated for installation later that year.

Meir and Menon spent the preceding Wednesday in the Quest airlock finalizing tool configurations, staging spacesuits and reviewing procedures. The spacewalk was scheduled to begin at 8:35 a.m. EDT. Flight engineers Jack Hathaway of NASA and Sophie Adenot of ESA helped with last-minute spacesuit preparations and reviewed procedures; they were to assist the pair in and out of their suits and monitor activities.

Hathaway and Adenot also took turns exercising in a seated position on the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device in the Columbus module, evaluating its potential for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The station's three Roscosmos cosmonauts focused on Earth observation studies, hardware inventories and lab inspections, including configuring multi-wavelength imagery hardware for an automated overnight session.