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Spacewalkers add hands to international space station robot
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 14 - 03 - 2008


Spacewalking astronauts added hands to a
robot outside the international space station early Friday
as experts on the ground devised a plan they hope will fix
a problem getting power to the giant machine, AP reported.
The Canadian robot, named Dextre, needs to have power to
heat its joints, limbs and electronics. The $200 million
machine designed to help maintain the orbiting outpost
could be damaged if left cold for days.
Canadian engineers initially suspected the trouble could
be with a timer, and they created the software patch to fix
it.
But Pierre Jean, Canada's acting space station program
manager, said experts now believe the problem stems from a
design flaw in the temporary cable that is supposed to
provide power to Dextre until it is fully assembled.
If that is the case, Jean said, Dextre should have no
trouble powering up once the astronauts finish putting it
together and install it on the station next week.
To be sure, the crew plans to hook up Dextre to the space
station's robotic arm later Friday. If the problem is with
the temporary cables, Dextre should receive power from the
arm. If it does not, engineers will have to find another
fix.
«I think at this point in time we're pretty confident
that by 10 o'clock tonight we should have the answer to
this particular question,» Jean said.
In the worst case, spacewalking astronauts could go back
out to disassemble Dextre and leave it in pieces at the
space station. That way, the robot would not have to be
heated.
The crew still ran the software patch to see if it helped,
but it did not.
While spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman
worked on the robot, two of their crew mates used a robotic
arm to remove a Japanese storage compartment from shuttle
Endeavour's cargo bay and attach it to the space station.
It's the first part of Japan's massive Kibo lab, which
means «hope.» Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to deliver
the main part of the lab in May.
The spacewalk, which lasted seven hours, was the first of
five planned during Endeavour's unusually long stay at the
space station. Three of them will focus on Dextre, one of
the Canadian Space Agency's main contributions to the space
station.
The 3,400-pound (1,542-kilogram) robot, when assembled, is
12 feet high and has a shoulder span of nearly 8 feet. It
is designed to help spacewalkers with some of their more
routine maintenance chores, with the eventual goal of
reducing the amount of time astronauts spend outside.
It was the first spacewalk for Reisman, who flew up on
Endeavour and will live aboard the station until June. It
was the fourth spacewalk for Linnehan, who worked on the
Hubble Space Telescope in 2002.
Toward the end of their outing, the spacewalkers were
treated to a stunning view of city lights in the midwestern
United States, probably Chicago.


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