It’s a Handful, but NASA Gets Robot Arm to Work

After four days of furious work, NASA overcame crippling computer problems at the International Space Station on Saturday and completed critical robot-arm operations with the astronauts’ help.

It was slow going, but the space station’s new robot arm successfully handed its 3,000-pound packing crate to space shuttle Endeavour’s robot arm.

Even before the computer problems, this unprecedented mechanical handshake had been considered the most complicated robotic feat to be attempted in space. All 10 astronauts and cosmonauts on the docked spacecraft were needed for Saturday’s nerve-racking operation.

“A lot of great relationships start off with a good, firm handshake, and we certainly saw one of those here today,” Mission Control at Kennedy Space Center said. “It’s a whole new dimension for space station assembly.”

Their triumph helped clear the way for a departure of Endeavour today and an arrival Monday of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Dennis Tito, a wealthy Los Angeles resident traveling as the world’s first “space tourist.”

Mission Control said the undocking depended on the outcome of additional computer repair work, to be conducted Saturday night, but added, “We’re hopeful.”

Astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms waited for Mission Control’s go-ahead before releasing the brakes on the 58-foot robot arm that was installed on space station Alpha last weekend. Helms moved the seven-jointed arm one joint at a time so the computers would not be overtaxed, and took half an hour to steer it toward the shuttle.

The 50-foot shuttle arm then reached out and grabbed onto the opposite end of the crate.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had the honor of operating the shuttle arm, made in Canada. The billion-dollar station arm also was built by his country.

The 250-mile-high action got underway Saturday afternoon after flight controllers revived one of the two backup control-and-command computers.

At least two of the three command-and-control computers on the space station had to be working before NASA would allow the astronauts to operate the space station’s robot arm. All three had failed in quick succession beginning Tuesday night.