HOUSTON — Astronauts debuted the international space station’s newest piece of equipment Saturday during a successful but very limited test.
Space shuttle Discovery crew members Akihiko Hoshide and Karen Nyberg moved two of the six joints on the Japanese Kibo lab’s robotic arm for the first time, maneuvering them very slightly with a series of commands.
“The very first maneuver was completed successfully,” Hoshide told Japanese flight controllers near Tokyo.
Full deployment of the 33-foot arm will be done after Discovery leaves Space Station Alpha on Wednesday. However, it won’t be used for any actual work until after the launch into orbit next year of the billion-dollar lab’s third and final section — a “porch” for exterior experiments — and a second, smaller robotic arm.
The initial deployment of the robotic arm provides room for astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr. to finish some final outfitting of the lab today during their third and final spacewalk of the current shuttle mission.
On Saturday, Fossum and Garan got word that an extra task had been added to the spacewalk. Fossum will collect samples of grease and small amounts of debris detected on a solar wing rotating joint on the space station’s left side.
The grease and debris will be analyzed by engineers back on Earth to see whether it can help them figure out what caused a similar joint on the right side of the station to be clogged with metal shavings.
