Shuttle astronauts plug in robot’s arms

The spacewalkers started their task early.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — With Dextre the robot’s power problem solved, astronauts ventured outside the international space station Saturday to put together the bulk of the gigantic walking and working machine.

The robot’s hands were attached to its 11-foot arms during the first spacewalk of Endeavour’s space station trip. This time, astronauts aimed to connect the arms to the shoulders. First, though, the robot was going to sit up on its transport bed, rising like Frankenstein as one astronaut put it.

Spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Michael Foreman were so eager to get started on the robot assembly that they went out the hatch early, and quickly got the arms ready for attachment.

The nighttime spacewalk — expected to last into the wee hours of today — came close to being drastically altered or even delayed. For nearly two days, a cable design flaw prevented NASA from getting power to Dextre, lying in pieces on its transport bed.

It wasn’t until the astronauts gripped Dextre with the space station’s mechanical arm Friday night that the robot got the power it needed to wake up and keep its joints and electronics from freezing.

“Dextre is doing much better,” said astronaut Garrett Reisman, who performed the first spacewalk with Linnehan on Thursday night.

“When he’s all put together, he looks a lot like a person,” he added. “He’s got two arms, a body, a head, and he is designed to do basically the same things that we do on a spacewalk.”

At the same time, Reisman considers Dextre a little scary and monstrous-looking. Before the flight, he likened it to Frankenstein coming alive.

Once fully assembled, Dextre will stand 12 feet and have a mass of 3,400 pounds. Its shoulder span is nearly 8 feet.

A third spacewalk, on Monday night, will provide Dextre with a tool holster. That ought to do it.

The Canadian-built Dextre — which cost more than $200 million and was flown up on Endeavour — is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts. Its name, in fact, is short for dexterous. The hope is that the robot eventually will take over some of the more punishing chores, like lugging around big replacement parts.