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Spacewalks are hard work, so sometimes you need to take a break for a moment and snap a gorgeous selfie with your home planet in the background.
What is it?
During a pre-Halloween spacewalk on Oct. 29, 2026, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk took a moment to pose for a photograph.
In this moment, the International Space Station to which he was tethered was orbiting 267 miles (430 kilometers) above the South Atlantic Ocean down below on Earth.
During this spacewalk — the first for a Canadian since 2019 — Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon worked together to install a new roll-out solar array on the station while also performing some “get ahead” tasks to prep for the next spacewalk, which is happening today (Nov. 5).
During today’s excursion, the same two astronauts will venture out into space, tethered to the space station, to install the eighth and final roll-out solar array. These eight new arrays will boost the station’s available power by a total of 30%, according to NASA officials.
Why is it incredible?
When we think of astronauts working in space, we might think of the important science and research they’re doing aboard the station. Astronauts work on everything from biomedical research to plant science and physics experiments. But the job also includes work on the space station itself.
Sometimes they have to venture out into the vacuum of space to fix urgent problems. These situations can be tense, and there’s a lot of pressure to get things absolutely right.
But even spacewalks that do relatively mundane maintenance work, like the one on Oct. 29, come with pressure. Every minute that astronauts spend outside of the space station, there are countless risk factors floating around. Earth orbit is a very harsh environment, after all, even if it does allow for some pretty amazing selfies.
