Spacewalkers Turn ‘Surgeon,’ Replace Arthritic Joint in Wrist of Robot Arm
Two spacewalking astronauts successfully performed wrist surgery Thursday on the international space station’s 58-foot robot arm, replacing an arthritic joint.
“Time to wake up the patient and see how the big arm’s doing after surgery,” Mission Control said after the repairs made by Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin.
Half an hour later, after power coursed through the arm, Mission Control declared success.
“There have been surprises we encountered,” Chang-Diaz radioed down. “But with everyone’s help, we got the job done.”
It was the first repair work done on the billion-dollar mechanical arm since its launch to the station over a year ago.
One of the three wrist joints in the Canadian-built high-tech construction crane seized up in March.
NASA managed to work around the problem during a building project in April but wanted the joint replaced in case more trouble developed. Without a reliable robot arm, space station construction would come to a halt.
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