Indian American astronaut Raja Chari took a 6 hour and 54-minute spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Kayla Barron in preparation for the installation of a solar array at the International Space Station

FREMONT, CA: In preparation for installing a solar array at the International Space Station, Indian American astronaut Raja Chari took a 6 hour and 54-minute spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Kayla Barron. According to NASA, the pair started their spacewalk at 8:12 a.m. EDT Tuesday. They finished at 3:06 p.m. EDT after fulfilling their critical objectives for the day by constructing and installing modification kits.

It was Chari's first spacewalk and flight engineer Barron's second. Chari is the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon ship commander, which is now docked to the ISS. They live and work aboard the microgravity laboratory for a six-month science mission to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions as part of NASA's Moon and Mars exploration approach, which includes lunar missions through NASA's Artemis programme. Chari was selected as an astronaut in 2017 after serving as a colonel in the US Air Force with over 2,500 hours of flight service. In 2020, he was chosen as the commander of the Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station, and he was sent to the orbiting station.

Chari and Barron constructed a support bracket for a future ISS roll-out solar array (iROSA) during the spacewalk. Two of the six iROSAs have been placed on station thus far, with four more arrays on the way. Six of the station's eight power channels will eventually be supplemented by the arrays, raising the total available power from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts. During the spacewalk, dubbed US EVA 79, astronauts Tom Marshburn and Matthias Maurer assisted the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and monitored their external operations. For nearly a week, Chari and Barron had been preparing for the spacewalk, putting their spacesuits on and placing their spacewalk supplies inside Quest.

Chari holds a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and is a graduate of the United States Naval Test Pilot School, which has a long history of producing astronauts. Born in Milwaukee, he was raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa.