Meir and Adenot finish a station spacewalk aimed at the next docking
U.S. spacewalk 99 ran 6 hours and 49 minutes. The new piece on Harmony is there so arriving spacecraft can judge distance.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot finished a spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 3:29 p.m. EDT, NASA’s station blog reported on 1 September 2026. The excursion lasted 6 hours and 49 minutes.
They installed a retroreflector on the forward port of the Harmony module. Arriving spacecraft bounce light off it while they are closing in to dock. The pair also replaced a high-definition camera on the truss and swabbed the exterior for microorganisms. They started jumper-cable work and the prep for a later radiator swap on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Mission Control moved the remaining guide studs, cables, and other non-critical tasks to a later walk after the timeline slipped.
It was U.S. spacewalk 99, Meir’s seventh and Adenot’s third, and the 284th spacewalk in support of the station. Meir is now third among NASA women for spacewalk count, behind Peggy Whitson and Suni Williams.
Most station EVAs are this kind of work. Navigation hardware, a camera, a sample, a cable. The science is often the thing the walk makes possible next month.
Desk note from a public release. Source: NASA. This site is not the agency.