International Cooperation at its Best
March 11th, 2008 by Wulf
I’m sorry. I know I don’t usually post sciency stuff, but Gigantor the Space Age Robot is pretty darn cool! Full story is here.
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When Endeavour docks at the space station late Wednesday, the crew will quickly get to work by retrieving pieces of a massive robot named Dextre with the shuttle’s robotic arm.
Astronauts are slated to spend two spacewalking days assembling the 1.72-ton robot, which will use two 11-foot (3.4-meter) arms, gripper-like “hands” and a tool belt to gently replace failed components outside the space station. The Canadian Space Agency built the new robot to help relieve station astronauts of the more routine maintenance work outside the ISS.
“Dextre is ‘Gigantor the Space Age Robot,’ is what I think,” said [Rick] Linnehan, who will partake in the device’s assembly. “He’s massive and crawls around the station. He’s got two big arms and he’s got all these appendages and tools to plug in. It’s pretty wild.”
Before Dextre is put together outside of the ISS, however, astronauts willinstall the Japanese Logistics
Pressurized (JLP) module — that nation’s first room in space, and the first of three Kibo laboratory components.
“For the first time we’ll have representatives from four nations; from Russia, from the U.S., from Europe and from Japan,” [Takao] Doi [of Japan] said of the JLP’s installation, calling his own participation a dream come true. “Some people have been working on this program more than 25 years, it’s just unbelievable.”The STS-123 crew will also spend two other days outside the airlock to test heat-resistant tile repair methods and replace bearings in a damaged solar array joint.
My son would love this stuff.
Hope is tomorrow’s veneer over today’s disappointment.
- Evan Esar