Second Spacewalk to Build Robot Successful

After successfully tackling the power problem of the robot Dextre, astronauts of the space shuttle Endeavour, endeavored outside the international space station on Saturday to assemble the bulk of the gigantic “dexterous” machine.

On Friday night, the astronauts had used the space station's mechanical arm to grab onto Dextre and supply electricity to the machine's various joints and electronics. The robot had been lying inactive outside the orbiting complex for nearly two days.

A fault in an electrical circuit had left the $209 million robot Dextre, without heaters to protect its systems from the minus 200 degree F (-128.88C) temperatures of space.

The assembling of the robot began late Thursday by spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman on the first of five spacewalks scheduled during Endeavour's 16-day mission. The robot's hands were attached to its 11-foot arms during that spacewalk. On Saturday, the astronauts connected the arms to the shoulders. But it was not an easy task.

Brute force and a pry bar had to come into the picture to get one of the robot's arms off the transport bed, where it had been latched down for launch. After a lot of yanking and banging by spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Michael Foreman the two stuck bolts finally gave way.

But by then, the astronauts had fallen an hour behind schedule. The nighttime spacewalk which was expected to last into the wee hours of Sunday came close to being drastically altered or even delayed.

Endeavour and its seven-man crew delivered Dextre — lying in pieces on its transport bed — to the space station. Dextre has a height of 3.7 metres and a width of 2.4 metres. It also has two multi-jointed arms, with sensors on the wrists that give its hands a sense of touch.

A third spacewalk is planned for Monday night. This will provide Dextre with a tool holster and finally complete the entire assembly procedure of the robot.

The Canadian-built robot is designed to do regular tasks outside the station like replacing batteries and wires, and will reduce the number of dangerous spacewalks astronauts must perform.

The Canadian Space Agency officials were reluctant to cast blame for Dextre's belated wakeup. The agency and its main contractor were responsible for designing the cable that failed to relay power to the robot, via its transport bed.

The Endeavour crew reached the space station on Wednesday for a construction and servicing call to the station. The shuttle blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday and is scheduled to land back on Earth on March 26.