Expedition 75 began the week preparing for a spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station's power generation system, NASA reported on Monday, Oct. 26. Flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency are scheduled to exit the Quest airlock at 8 a.m. EDT Thursday to install one of two roll-out solar arrays on the outpost's port side truss structure. The planned spacewalk is set to last six hours and 45 minutes.

Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney will help the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and assist with the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The four astronauts met Monday to practice the arm maneuvers needed for the spacewalk. Under the plan, Menon and Kutryk first release the array from an external pallet; Menon then attaches to the arm, retrieves the array and rides Canadarm2 to the worksite while Kutryk moves along the truss to join the installation. Mission controllers will activate the new array afterward. The pair also checked their spacesuit jetpacks, and Watkins helped Kutryk confirm cooling and water systems were configured safely.

Other work included cargo transfers inside the docked SpaceX Dragon, which arrived Oct. 15 and is due to return in mid-November. Delaney logged sleep patterns for the RelaxPro stress-reduction study and treated bioprinted blood vessel tissues. Roscosmos station commander Pyotr Dubrov and flight engineer Anna Kikina measured circulatory responses to weightlessness.