Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Dextre Checks Out

Dextre, the robotic astronaut assistant aboard ISS, successfully completed its final check out last week. The first real task for the two-armed robot will be next month. A Japanese cargo vessel will arrive, and Dextre will unload it and place two suites of equipment in their permanent positions.

Dextre is stationed on the outside of ISS and is designed to do some of the routine maintenance tasks that have been done up to now by spacewalking astronauts, thus relieving them of some more dangerous duty and freeing them to spend more time on more productive projects.

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