This
story was updated at 9:21 p.m. EDT.
HOUSTON -
The International Space Station's (ISS) new mechanical maintenance man officially
moved in Tuesday when astronauts attached it to the exterior of the orbiting
laboratory's U.S. Destiny module.
Until today,
the Canadian-built
robot Dextre remained fixed on the platform that ferried it to the ISS
inside the cargo bay of NASA's shuttle Endeavour. But after three separate
spacewalks to add hands, arms, camera eyes and a tool belt of sorts to the
massive robot, Dextre is settled onto its new orbital residence.
"Dextre is
now grappled the lab's grapple facility," said ISS flight director Kwatsi Alibahuro
in an evening briefing here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Built by
the Canadian Space Agency, Dextre is a 3,440-pound (1,560-kilogram) robot
designed to fill in for astronauts to replace batteries and perform other
routine repair jobs that would otherwise expose a flesh-and-blood spaceflyer to
the added risk of a spacewalk. Its two 11-foot (3.4-meter) long arms are tipped
with hand-like grippers sensitive to light touches, can lift up to 1,323 pounds
(600 kg) and position hardware with an accuracy of about 1/12 of an inch (2
mm).
"He looks
like a gunfighter with his sidearm raised," shuttle commander Dominic Gorie said
earlier today as he described the two-armed Dextre to Mission Control.
The
$209-million robot is Canada's latest addition to the ISS, where it joined its
simpler Canadarm2 cousin and a railcar-mounted work platform known as the
Mobile Base System.
Astronauts
plucked the 12-foot (3.7-meter) tall Dextre free of its cargo pallet crib early
Tuesday using the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. They left the robot hanging
out in space overnight and attached it to a grapple point on NASA's Destiny
laboratory at about 7:59 p.m. EDT (2359 GMT) tonight after performing some
final tests.
About the
only glitch came when astronauts commanded the robot to pivot on its waist
joint.
Instead of
moving in the expected direction, Dextre turned in the exact opposite way,
Alibahuro said. The glitch is minor and may be due to a simple, yet errant,
minus sign in one of the robot's computer files, he added.
Dextre's
electrical hardware and arm joint brakes have already passed their own system
checks, mission managers have said.
"We got it
all up and running, so Dextre is alive," Endeavour mission specialist Robert
Behnken said this week.
Behnken and
crewmate Rick Linnehan outfitted Dextre with waist-mounted cameras and tool kit
platform during
a Monday spacewalk to prepare the robot for its move to the station's hull.
Two earlier spacewalks delivered the robot's hands and arms.
With Dextre
stowed on the Destiny lab - where it is expected to stay through at least
NASA's next shuttle mission to fly in late May - astronauts aboard the ISS will
retrieve the robot's carrier platform from a perch on the station's first
portside truss segment and return it to Endeavour's payload bay for the trip
home.
The
astronauts are also due to take a few hours off tonight to catch their breath
as they pass the midpoint of their 16-day construction mission to the ISS. That
off-duty time is scheduled to begin at about 12:28 a.m. EDT (0428 GMT)
Wednesday morning.
In addition
to delivering Dextre, Gorie and his crew have swapped out one member of the station's
three-person crew and installed the first piece of Japan's massive laboratory
Kibo (Japanese for "Hope"), an
attic-like module, for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The
astronauts are also slated to test a shuttle heat shield method that uses a
space age caulk gun to fill in dinged belly tiles with a pink ablative goo
during a Thursday spacewalk, then inspect the station's balky starboard solar
array joint in a Saturday excursion.
Alibahuro
said mission managers are also planning to call on Endeavour's spacewalking
team to reattempt the installation of a stubborn materials experiment to the
ISS exterior during their Saturday spacewalk. Astronauts had trouble trying to install
the experiment in a Monday spacewalk.
Endeavour
and its seven-astronaut crew are in the midst of a record-long construction
flight to the ISS. They are due to depart the station on March 24 and return to
Earth in the evening of 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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