Cumbrian Sky

No, that evil-looking, multi-armed mechanical monster above isn't the latest piece of Terminator technology, sent back from the future to menace us and bring about the fall of Mankind, it's a new and vastly improved robot arm, Canadian-built, which has just been fitted to the International Space Station by spacewalking crewmembers of the shuttle Endeavour. DEXTRE.

What exactly is DEXTRE? Well, this is from Wikipedia:

Dextre resembles a headless torso fitted with two extremely agile 3m-long arms. The 3.5m long body pivots at the "waist". The body has a grapple fixture at one end that can be grasped by the larger Space Station Arm, Canadarm2 so that the SPDM can be positioned at the various Orbital Replacement Unit (ORU) worksites around the Space Station. The other end of the body has an end effector virtually identical to that of Canadarm2, so that the SPDM can be stored on Space Station grapple fixtures or can be used as an extension to the larger arm.

The two SPDM arms each have seven offset joints allowing the arm the same flexibility of motion as the Canadarm2 with a greater precision. At the end of each of these arms is a system called the Orbital Replacement Unit/Tool Changeout Mechanism (OTCM). It has built-in grasping jaws, a retractable socket drive, a monochrome TV camera, lights, and an umbilical connector that can provide power, data, and video to/from a payload.

The lower body of Dextre has a pair of orientable colour TV cameras with lights, a platform for stowing ORUs, and a tool holster. The tool holster is equipped with three different tools used to perform various tasks around the Space Station.

DEXTRE is going to be invaluable for future ISS operations - as long as it doesn't turn on us and start following orders from the SKYNET computer network... ;-)

Seriously tho, doesn't it look... well... like a killer robot? And is it really a coincidence that its name is an anagram of the serial killer from the new hit TV series "Dexter"..?

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