This story was updated at 2:53 a.m. ET.
HOUSTON — Astronauts remedied a power
glitch with a giant robot outside the International Space Station (ISS) Friday
evening, poising spacewalkers to attach its two arms tonight.
NASA and
Canadian mission managers said Friday morning that a flawed cable in a pallet
containing the pieces of the 1.7-ton robot, named
Dextre, was to blame. To prove the hypothesis, astronauts grappled Dextre's "head" with the space station's robotic arm
around 9:59 p.m. EDT (0159 GMT March 15) — a power-providing move that
circumvented the flawed wiring.
"I
guess I have to say it: It's alive!" Pierre John, acting program manager
for the Canadian space station program, said here at Johnson Space Center after Dextre's successful power-up. "This morning ... I was cautiously
optimistic," he said, "but the proof is in the pudding."
Jean
explained that the electricity now feeding heaters should keep the robot's
vital electronics from being damaged by the harsh cold of space.
Dextre is a
servicing robot designed to cut back on the number of dangerous spacewalks
astronauts will perform outside of the space station. Led by commander Dominic
Gorie, the STS-123 shuttle Endeavour mission delivered Dextre's pallet to the
ISS on Wednesday and Japan's
first orbital room on Friday morning.
Shortly after
the platform's attachment, however, mission controllers found that their
commands to route power to the robot failed, as did a Friday afternoon software
patch aimed to solve the problem.
Jean said
the problem can ultimately be traced back to a mistake made when engineers were
asked to change the way Dextre's pallet was powered by the space station. He
explained that the cable was not broken — it just wasn't the correct kind for
the powering system, preventing the space station's computers
from communicating with the high-tech robotic pallet.
"The
cable design wasn't updated for the system," Jean said of the oversight
that blocked the flow of electricity. "It was one of those things that
sometimes happens. I don't think you can really lay blame ... on anyone."
Spacewalkers
Rick Linnehan and Garrett Reisman, an ISS flight engineer, attached the robot's
hands during a seven-hour overnight
spacewalk that began Thursday night. With the pallet's mistake now worked
around, STS-123 mission specialists Linnehan and Mike Foreman are slated to
attach each of Dextre's two 775-pound (352-kilogram) arms Saturday night.
Shuttle
Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.'s Kennedy Space Center on March 11 and docked at the space station on March 13. The
100-ton orbiter is slated to return to Earth on March 26.
NASA is
broadcasting Endeavour's STS-123 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's shuttle
mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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