Spacers

It's Alive!

Dextre is alive!



He is a 12 foot high robot with 11 foot arms weighing in at 3,440 lbs, and his name is Dextre! Spacewalking astronauts Rick Linnehan and Robert Behnken worked like modern day Frankensteins to attach two huge arms to the robot as he sat up for the first time on his orbiting operating table.



The arms were tightly packed on the sides of Dextre's assembly pallete and secured from the vibrations of launch by a series of dampers and pins. The astronauts had to put some real elbow grease into removing the pins, which had tightened after Endeavour rocketed into the night sky a few days back.

Once Dextre was assembled, astronauts on board the station put Dextre through some preliminary moves, primarily testing brakes on the many joints on his arms. The first thing they want to be sure of is that when they move his arms, they can stop them!

Keep watching as they continue to check out Dextre during thethree remaining spacewalks of the mission.

Happy Spacing, Spacers!

SpaceHead