Joint Shuttle-Station Crews Set Out to Tally Space First

 By Todd Halvorson
 Cape Canaveral
 Bureau Chief
 posted: 07:00 am ET
 25 April 2001

 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Astronauts aboard Endeavour and the International
 Space Station set out to stow a 1.5-ton crane carrier in the shuttle's
 cargo bay Wednesday, marking the first time two robot arms -- and two
 robot arm operators -- have ever worked in concert in orbit.

 Station flight engineer Susan Helms will be wielding the station's new
 $600 million construction crane about 8:45 a.m. EDT (12:45 GMT) as the
 pallet-like carrier is passed to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who
 will be operating the shuttle's smaller robot arm.

 Ninety minutes later, Hadfield will tuck the pallet away in the shuttle's
 cargo bay, opening up what NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) call
 a new era in robotic operations in space.

 Said Benoit Marcotte, director of operations for the CSA: "The handoff
 itself will be just a momentous event, for sure."

 "It's a pretty complex operation," Endeavour mission specialist Umberto
 Guidoni, an Italian astronaut representing the European Space Agency,
 said in a preflight interview.

 "For the first time, we will be operating two arms at the same time. It
 requires a lot of coordination between the two crews -- the station crew
 and the shuttle crew. So that really will be an interesting part of the
 flight."

 The passing of the pallet will come at the end of some extensive testing
 with the station's newly installed Canadian robot arm, which was anchored
 to the U.S. Destiny science lab Monday and then brought to life
 electrically during a spacewalk Tuesday.

 Considered the heart of Canada's $900 million station contribution, the
 57.7-foot (17.5-meter) arm will play a key role in almost all future
 construction at the international station.

 An advanced version of the shuttle's Canadian robot arm, the station
 crane is equipped with snare-like devices that act as hands at either of
 its extremities -- a new capability that will enable it to move
 end-over-end, inch-worming to different work sites outside the outpost.

 That kind of robotic flexibility will play a key role in adding bus-sized
 laboratories, electrical power towers and skeletal truss segments to the
 growing outpost, which ultimately will span an area nearly as large as
 two football fields.

 The pallet being passed off by the robot arm operators was used to ferry
 the new crane up to the station. Limbering up the new station crane,
 Helms plans to wave the 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) carrier around to
 make sure it can handle a relatively hefty load.

 Four times stronger and more flexible than the shuttle's robot arm, the
 new station crane is powerful enough to snatch one of NASA's winged
 spaceships out of orbit and then dock it to the station.

 In the works since 1986, the so-called Canadarm2 was designed, in fact,
 to do just that. NASA, however, since has perfected piloted docking
 procedures.

 Station flight engineer Jim Voss and shuttle mission specialist Scott
 Parazynski will serve as back-up arm operators during the orbital crane
 tests and the handoff of the pallet.

 The rest of the joined shuttle-station crew, meanwhile, will continue
 unloading an Italian moving van that was temporarily mounted to the
 station Monday.

 The shuttle-borne cargo carrier is filled with several tons of supplies
 and equipment ferried to the station for its resident crew, which
 includes Russian commander Yuri Usachev.

 The three station tenants are in the midst of a four-month tour of duty
 that began in March.

 The visiting shuttle astronauts are scheduled to depart the station
 Saturday. Launched last Thursday, Endeavour and its seven-member crew are
 due back here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 10 a.m. EDT (14:00 GMT)
 April 30.