CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Two robot-arm operators executed an extraordinary handoff at the International Space Station Saturday, a major step toward shuttle Endeavours departure from the outpost and the arrival of a Russian Soyuz taxi crew that includes space tourist Dennis Tito.
In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, ground engineers finally revived a backup station command-and-control computer before the astronauts employed Canadian construction cranes on either ship to move a 1.5-ton freight crate into Endeavours payload bay.
Carefully choreographed to avoid taxing the stations problem-plagued command computers, the complicated operation marked the first time two robot arms and two robot-arm operators have ever worked in concert in space.
Credit U.S. astronaut Susan Helms, who was wielding the outposts newly installed "Big Arm" and Canadian Chris Hadfield, operator of its older, smaller shuttle cousin.
Fittingly, their high-flying handoff came as the 10 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the linked shuttle-station complex soared more than 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Canada.
"The first robotic handoff is complete as one generation of Canadian arms passes the torch to another," said NASA flight commentator Kelly Humphries.
The unprecedented, meanwhile, is expected to become commonplace over the next five years as station astronauts and cosmonauts use the Big Arm to erect the rest of the outpost, which eventually will span an area as large as a New York City block.
"Its a whole new dimension for space station assembly," astronaut Cady Coleman told the joint shuttle-station crew from NASAs Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.
"The dimension from here was amazing to look at," Hadfield said. "Looking out the overhead shuttle window at those two arms reaching up and around each other, and in fact as we were grappling the pallet, we were flying over Canada."
Considered a final but crucial job for the shuttles multinational crew, the special delivery set the stage for Endeavours scheduled departure at 1:34 p.m. EDT (17:34 GMT) Sunday.
Still to come: Some final work with the stations main U.S. command-and-control computers to make certain at least two will remain in good operating condition after Endeavour departs.
All three failed earlier this week, stalling what up until then had been a textbook mission to deliver a new Canadian robot arm to the station.
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