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Dextre: Latest News

Dextre’s next-to-final exam

In July 2010, Dextre was assigned to change two faulty circuit breaker boxes on board the International Space Station (ISS) as his “final exam,” a last step in the Canadian robotic handyman’s official certification for duty. During a practice run for the maneuver, the box remained steadfastly jammed in its slot (the likely culprit being small springs on either side of the box that refused to give way). Engineering teams were analyzing the issue when, just days later, a cooling pump malfunctioned on board the Space Station. Since repairing the cooling pump was critical to the Station’s life support systems, Dextre’s RPCM task was set aside temporarily to focus on the more urgent issue.

Even though the practice run was temporarily deferred, the test ended up providing the Canadian Space Agency’s robotics team with a wealth of data on Dextre’s movements, especially the robot’s keen sense of touch. “The good news is that we know from our data that Dextre executed his task perfectly," said Pierre Jean, head of the International Space Station program at the Canadian Space Agency. “In fact, the operations allowed us to complete several important steps in Dextre’s certification process.”

Dextre’s new final exam has been slated for December 22-23, 2010, when he will relocate a series of payloads from one worksite to another. This last step will allow the Canadian Space Agency to complete the final checkouts of Dextre’s systems and officially grant him his diploma. Dextre will peform his first official task in early February 2011, when he unloads the Japanese HTV2 spacecraft.