After all the years of live feeds and videos of these awesome folk in space I am still in awe.
After seven-hour operation, the ISS has a new 'hand'
NASA commander Randy Bresnik and astronaut Mark Vande Hei have spent seven hours upgrading one of the International Space Station's robot arms. The pair worked to attach a new Latching End Effector – the “hand” at the end of the Canadarm2 – to replace one that wore out. Canadarm2 is any old gripper: as well as performing …
COMMENTS
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Friday 6th October 2017 13:09 GMT Anonymous Blowhard
"Given the costs involved, this should be designed and operated to last the lifetime of the station, despite the harsh conditions."
Maybe, but most of the engineered products you're familiar with have been through many generations of design, operation and improvement, as well as competing against similar devices; so they are the result of accumulated wisdom on solving a particular problem.
The arm on the ISS is a second generation product (the first was on the Space Shuttle) and the opportunities for inspection and maintenance are pretty limited.
Even if a product is perfect and built to last a lifetime, it can still require replacement if it gets enough abuse from the users...
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Saturday 7th October 2017 22:53 GMT Francis Boyle
It's grabbing spacecraft
not making lattes. Sure you could probably design it so it could last 800 operations but then it would likely cost $250 million and be less reliable. And when $100 is the sort of money you're paying for a single launch there's not a lot of incentive to see how far you can stretch its life with duct tape and WD40.