The International Space Station has a new crew member, a jack-of-all-trades who’s willing to work long hours out in the cold of space.
The Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, also known as Dextre, is a 12-foot-long, 3,440-pound machine designed to perform routine repair jobs that otherwise would require a flesh-and-blood astronaut to the added risk of a spacewalk. The $210 million device’s two 11-foot-long arms are tipped with hand-like grippers, strong enough to lift hardware that weighs more than a half-ton and nimble enough to position it within 1/12th of an inch of a given spot.
"He looks like a gunfighter with his sidearm raised," said Dominic Gorie, commander of the NASA space shuttle Endeavor, whose astronauts recently attached the Canadian-built robot to the exterior of the station’s U.S. Destiny lab module.
After Endeavor transported Dextre to the ISS in its cargo bay, astronauts used the station’s existing Canadarm2 robot to free Dextre from its cargo pallet. It took three additional spacewalks by human astronauts to attach Dextre’s hands, arms, cameras and other tools.
Space.com reported that the complicated project went smoothly, except for a lone glitch. When astronauts commanded Dextre to pivot on its waist joint, the robot went in the opposite of the intended direction. The error is believed to be a minor software problem.
Daily updates on the science and other activities of astronauts on the space station can be found at Spaceref.com.
