June 15 (UPI) -- NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg stepped outside of the International Space Station Thursday morning as they worked to install the sixth roll-out solar array on the orbiting laboratory.
The solar array, which will increase the space station's power capacity, was being installed on the opposite side of the starboard truss segment of the space station where the two Expedition 69 astronauts installed the fifth roll-out solar array last Friday. The astronauts slowly moved the solar array into position during the spacewalk that started at about 8:55 a.m.
They handed off the array to each other as they moved across the space station while receiving details instructions from NASA engineers on Earth.
The spacewalk was Bowen's 10th, tying a record for the most spacewalks by a U.S. astronaut. It was Hoburg's second.
The two astronauts took part in robotics training ahead of the mission on Tuesday alongside flight engineers Frank Rubio and Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates.
"The quartet practiced simulated Canadarm2 robotic arm maneuvers necessary to support Bowen and Hoburg when they remove the roll-out solar array from its flight support equipment and install it on the starboard truss," NASA said.
NASA said that Bowen and Hoburg also prepared their tools inside the Quest airlock, printed checklists they will attach to their spacesuit cuffs, and reviewed more spacewalk procedures on a computer.
Thursday's spacewalk was the latest in a series of missions. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin also prepared for a separate spacewalk on June 22. The two will remove and replace communications and science hardware and photograph the condition of the Zvezda service module during that time outside the space station.
It will be the fifth spacewalk for Prokopyev and the third for Petelin.
In April, the two cosmonauts conducted a six-hour spacewalk in their third attempt to move a radiator and an experiment module.
Astronauts and cosmonauts have made about a half dozen spacewalks this year at the International Space Station and more than 260 since the space station was assembled.
