CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. — Mr. Dextre stands taller than a house, has two seven-jointed
arms and can fly around the Earth in about 90 minutes. But he is not a
superhero, nor is "he" a person.
"Mr.
Dextre," as NASA's latest space shuttle Endeavour crew has coined it, is
actually a Canadian space-age robot bound for the International Space Station
(ISS) early
Tuesday morning along with Japan's first orbital room. Led by commander
Dominic Gorie, the seven-astronaut STS-123 crew will start
assembly of the giant robot in space later this week.
"Dextre
is probably the most sophisticated robot to go on orbit," said Pierre Jean, acting program manager
for the Canadian space station program, during a press conference here at Kennedy Space Center.
The special
purpose dexterous manipulator, as Jean referred to Dextre, is a
3,440-pound (1,560-kilogram) maintenance tool designed to cut back on the
number of dangerous trips astronauts make outside of the space station.
Robotic helper
Dextre can
gently replace failed space station devices as small as a phonebook to phone booth-sized objects weighing more than 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). Jean said
changing batteries, for example, is a routine yet delicate task the robot can do
with a person at its controls, either inside the ISS or on the ground.
"It's a dumb operation. You move the
battery, you put a new one in," Jean said. "When you have to do these
operations over and over, every time you have to use a [space station] crew
person."
And using
crewmembers means conducting risky spacewalks that expose astronauts
to dangerous micrometeoroids, severe heat and cold, and strong radiation.
"In
some ways a human may do the task quicker. Dextre, on the other hand, may take
longer than a human to do certain servicing tasks," Jean said. He noted,
however, that the device gives space station managers valuable options when it
comes to performing orbital busy work, including the ability to fetch items for
astronauts when they do have to work outside the ISS.
"You
give the ability to not tax the crew by forcing them to conduct an
[extravehicular activity]," he said of utilizing Dextre's five cameras, two gripper "hands" and a belt full of tools.
Out of
work?
One might
think an astronaut would feel threatened by such technological prowess. Wrong,
says Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette, a veteran spaceflyer slated
to journey to the ISS later this year.
"The
robot, I think, is never going to replace humans in space," Payette told SPACE.com.
"Humans will always need to be around to perform tasks robots may never be
able to achieve."
Payette
explained that Dextre will be extremely useful when assembled on orbit, but it
will never match the mobility, dexterity or independent thinking abilities of
people in almost any situation. She also thinks the design, construction and future
operation of Dextre — the final piece of Canada's ISS mobile servicing system —
will inform the creation of even better on-orbit robots.
That's a
prospect she said is not the least bit threatening to astronauts, but rather exciting.
"It's
absolutely essential, necessary step for want we want to do in the future,"
Payette said. "Just imagine being
on the moon and being able to send a robot outside to do some dangerous
work. I think that's where this is headed."
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