NASA's Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk completed U.S. Spacewalk 101 (Extravehicular activity, EVA-101), the 286th spacewalk in International Space Station (ISS) history. The 7-hour, 59-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) began at 1336 UTC and concluded at 2035 UTC, with the the duo successfully installing and deploying the eighth and final ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the station's starboard 3B power channel.

This spacewalk concluded a five-year power augmentation campaign that began in 2021, designed to compensate for the age-related degradation of the ISS's original solar arrays.

The final iROSA installation was the most complex of the series because the 3B channel on the S6 truss segment sits beyond the operational reach of the Canadarm2 robotic arm. To overcome this, Menon and Kutryk utilized a novel "leapfrog" handoff technique.

Menon rode the robotic arm to the worksite, transferred the 340-kilogramg array to Kutryk, and then secured himself to the station structure to assist in mounting. The deployment itself required no motors; the array unfurled to its full 19-meter length using stored potential energy in its carbon-composite booms.

The process was briefly paused during orbital night to inspect a power connector after controllers detected lower-than-expected current, but the array was successfully deployed shortly after.

"We are seeing half of the expected shunt current that we want," radioed Nichole Stilwell, a NASA astronaut serving as the spacewalk officer in Mission Control. "In this current config, we are not necessarily going to deploy."

Out of safety concerns — given that the arrays generate electricity whenever lit by the sun — the astronauts needed to wait for the space station to enter the shadow of Earth to see what could be done. In the interim, they spent the time cleaning up their worksite and returning the Canadarm2 to its park site as they would have done after the deployment.

They were able to clear the issue. "We are seeing good shunt currents on the ground, so we are go for deploy," said Stilwell.

"We got it done!" said Menon at the end of the 6-hour-and-59-minute spacewalk.

The eight new iROSA panels boost the station's total power output from approximately 152–160 kilowatts** to roughly 215 kilowatts, a 30% increase. This additional power is critical for sustaining station operations, including life support and research, through its planned controlled deorbit in 2030.

"Today marks the completion of not just one solar array but, over 15 years after its development, eight arrays," Menon said at the close of the spacewalk. "These solar arrays are incredible. Half the size of the old ones and bringing 40% more power."

The need for the iROSA augmentations was discovered by flight controllers when the space station's eight original arrays began to show degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs provide the additional electricity needed to support ISS operations through its retirement and controlled deorbit, which are currently scheduled to occur in late 2030.

The iROSA technology, developed by Redwire, is also selected to power the Power and Propulsion Element of NASA's Gateway lunar outpost.

Menon logged his fourth spacewalk (33.5 hours total in EVA suits), while Kutryk completed his first, becoming the fifth Canadian to walk in space. The duo had installed the seventh iROSA just one week prior (October 29, 2026), marking the 100th U.S. spacewalk conducted from the ISS without a docked Space Shuttle.

"Congratulations to you all on your stellar work to finish the last of the roll-out solar arrays and the upgrades to the ISS power system that will take it to the end of its journey," said Stilwell, addressing Menon and Kutryk. "It is fitting that we just surpassed 26 years of constant human presence on the International Space Station, and you all showed us what the best of humanity looks like executing one of the most difficult and dangerous [things] humans do and making it look easy. Congratulations!"

Each of the eight iROSAs and their mounting assemblies were delivered to the space station by SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. Beginning in June 2021, four teams of two astronauts did as was done on Thursday to deploy each array. In addition to Kutryk and Menon's work on the 2A and 3B power channels, the spacewalkers included Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency for the 2B and 4B channels; Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio, both with NASA, on 3A and 4A in December 2022; and NASA's Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg on 1A and 1B in June 2023.

Vice President JD Vance blamed the Republican Party's sweeping midterm defeat on the ongoing war in Iran, the U.S. relationship with Israel, and cost-of-living issues. In a lengthy post on X, Wednesday, Vance said, "The reason we lost is the war," noting that many 2024 candidate Donald Trump voters switched to Democrats out of anger over these issues.

Democrats reclaimed control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, flipping at least seven Senate seats and more than 25 House seats.

Exit polls showed that while 49% of voters cited cost of living and 55% cited government corruption as crucial to their vote, 34% said the Iran war was crucial. Nearly all Democratic House voters viewed the war as the "wrong decision," while 8 in 10 Republican House voters viewed it as the "right decision."

The vice president outlined a four-point strategy to win back voters: end the war, focus on inflation, put America first, and change U.S. relationship with Israel.

President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., publicly endorsed Vance’s analysis, writing that "Every word of this is 100%."

Trump agreed with the assessment, acknowledging in interviews that the war was a factor because it "drove the gasoline up a little bit, short term." However, the president maintained he had no regrets about the decision, saying, "If I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon."

The Pentagon estimated the war had cost taxpayers $47.1 billion as of early November 2026. The conflict, launched in February 2026, had stretched into its eighth month despite initial pledges of a four-to-five-week duration.

Vance’s comments are widely interpreted as an effort to distance himself from Trump ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run. Vance had reportedly been the White House figure "most opposed to a full-scale war;" and has been leading diplomatic talks to end the conflict

The United States reportedly carried out limited, “defensive” airstrikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday. This comes as popular American journalist Tucker Carlson claimed in a long post on X that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urgently pressuring Donald Trump to launch a nuclear strike on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain enrichment site, as conventional weapons cannot penetrate the site's 91-meter granite protection.

Iranian state media IRNA reported five to six explosions on the island and in nearby Bandar Abbas, though it initially did not confirm the cause. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed to have downed US drones, including MQ-9s and MQM-170s, using electronic warfare.

The U.S. strikes were reportedly part of a weeks-long secret campaign of smaller-scale attacks deliberately kept out of the public eye to avoid signaling a return to full-scale war.

The strikes occurred on the eve of the US midterm elections. President Donald Trump publicly downplayed the prospect of renewed large-scale hostilities, saying, “We had a war with Iran. We won;” and denying plans for new attacks.

However, according to journalist Carlson, Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly pressed Trump to consider fresh military action after the elections. "Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran," Carlson wrote on X. "The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program."

Carlson linked Netanyahu’s desperation for  to recent Israeli election results, claiming the Prime Minister needs Trump’s intervention to secure a 61-seat Knesset majority or face imprisonment, and alleged that officials like Pete Hegseth and Brad Cooper support renewed combat while JD Vance and Steve Witkoff urge diplomacy. The commentator warned that a decision could come by November 7, predicting inevitable World War III and massive civilian casualties from fallout.

Trump and Netanyahu reportedly held a "tough" phone call over the weekend, with the prime minister pressing for strikes immediately after Tuesday's U.S. midterms while Trump wanted negotiations to play out. The White House and Netanyahu's office declined to comment.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei stated "no nuclear activity is taking place" at Pickaxe Mountain, calling US threats "a fabricated pretext for aggression." CSIS satellite analysis of the mountain captured construction but could not confirm centrifuges or enrichment equipment inside.

The US has previously struck Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, but Pickaxe Mountain remains untouched. Trump has discussed deploying the conventional GBU-43/B "Mother of All Bombs" as an alternative.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance said there's progress toward a negotiated settlement with Tehran, and Iranian officials signaled willingness to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if US demands were met. "We've had a number of conversations with the Iranians. I actually just spoke with the president of the United States about about an hour ago about this," he told reporters Tuesday. "Look, the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We're going to keep on working at it."