Dextre to Ride Along with Kibo

Also to be delivered to the International Space Station will be the robot Dextre, a Canadian creation which will give the crew of the ISS the ability to make basic repairs and maintenance outside the station, without the need of conducting risky spacewalks. The Endeavor space shuttle will have the mammoth mission to carry the first section of the massive Kibo science laboratory, more precisely the Japanese Logics Pressurized (JLP) Module, plus the two-armed robot Dextre.

The STS-123 mission consists as usual of a crew of seven, led by commander Dominic Gorie, and is scheduled for launch on Tuesday, the 11th of March, at 2:28 a.m. EDT. Meaning that if the launch attempt is successful, the crew of the ISS along with that on Endeavor should be able to start moving the JLP Kibo into a temporary position as soon as 14 March, while the assembly of the Dextre could begin the next day.

Dextre weighs 1,560 kilograms, costing the Canadian Space Agency 274 million US dollars. To make the job of the astronauts a lot easier during the spacewalks, it has been crafted in a large piece to be attached to a platform outside the space station. With its two robotic arms, Dextre will be able to execute multiple standard tasks implied by astronomers in spacewalks.

Spacewalks are becoming increasingly risky for astronauts, thus the new robot could basically become sort of an extra member residing on-board, reducing the time required for spacewalks to increase that attributed to science.

The JLP module, weighing 9.2 tons, will be used to transport eight new experiments to the ISS, however when finished in 2009, the module will have the role of a storage module. The whole construction of the Kibo cost the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency, or JAXA, 6.6 billion US dollars.