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American Morning
Endeavour Astronauts Attach Robotic Arm to International Space Station
Aired April 24, 2001 - 10:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And at this hour, two astronauts have tools in hand and a robot arm in position and you're looking at a live picture of it happening right now above us. Two crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour are wiring the giant arm to the International Space Station.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's get right to it. What's taking place 240 miles right above us, and here to explain it, CNN space correspondent Miles O'Brien. Now, I want you to know, we've been following what we have named the helmet cam.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Helmet cam it is. Take a look at what it's like to be a space walker. This is the view of astronaut Chris Hadfield as he conducts his work outside the International Space Station. You think you've got problems with cables at home, try it in zero gravity. Look at that spaghetti there that he has to go through.
What you're looking at are computer, data and power cables that will attach the new billion dollar robotic arm to the space station and make it an operative device.
Check out these gloves. That's about $15,000 a copy. Right here, that's the checklist, just in case they forget what they're supposed to be doing, although they've sort of done this a few times before. The ratio is usually about 10 hours of time in the pool for every one hour of space walking time.
This is the second space walk of this mission. They got started about a half hour early because they breezed along through that checklist. So far things are going well. Look at some shots that came down a little bit earlier. Here's the view from the space shuttle Endeavour, looking back. That's the Destiny module. That's the main scientific lab for the space station. There's the porthole.
As you can see, they were closing the shutter at that point. And there are the space walkers. There's Hadfield and there's Parazynski doing their work, beginning the process of getting this robotic arm -- and here you see part of the pressurized mating adapter there, which is sort of a docking port -- getting it ready for, to be used in a functional way as this space station is built over the next five years. The bottom line is this thing is an inchworm-like device. It'll be able to crawl all over the 300 foot long station once it's complete and in the future will make it less necessary for space walkers to do exactly what you're seeing.
Now, these pictures you might say well, the NASA public relations department brought these out, as they open up -- that's a tool box.
PHILLIPS: What's that? OK.
O'BRIEN: That's some tool boxes that are stored on the outside. It's got a tether line in there. You know, everything they do, they're tethered at least with two cables because you do not want to fall off the station. Well, you wouldn't fall off, but fall away from the station.
In any case, these shots, while they're a lot of fun for us to watch, are basically for the engineers and mission control. If they get into a jam and they can't figure out why something isn't working right or a bolt isn't torquing properly, they can just send down a picture and the folks in Houston can sort of peek over their shoulder.
Anyway, the space walk is going well. They're about an hour and a half in to a six and a half hour run and we'll be watching them.
PHILLIPS: Now, through all these connections, the power, the cables, etc., what's that going to tell us, say, a year from now?
O'BRIEN: Well, it'll make it possible for the crew members on that space station to literally see what the arm is doing and send it commands and send it power as it kind of works its way across the station to either install a piece or repair something. So this is key, this is sort of the key nervous system lifeline for this billion dollar robot arm which they installed on Sunday.
PHILLIPS: All right, Miles O'Brien, thank you, sir.
O'BRIEN: My pleasure.
HARRIS: I take it back. He is not technology boy. He is the titan of technology. Is that OK with you? Do you like that one?
O'BRIEN: I'll take it.
PHILLIPS: Lord of the heavens.
HARRIS: OK.
O'BRIEN: I'll put it on my business card.
HARRIS: Good deal.
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