Astronauts Build Robot in Space

March 15, 2008 -- With Dextre the robot's power problem solved, astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station's on Saturday to put together the bulk of the gigantic walking and working machine.

The robot's hands were attached to its 11-foot arms during the first spacewalk of Endeavour's space station trip. This time, astronauts aimed to connect the arms to the shoulders. First, though, the robot was going to sit up on its transport bed, rising like Frankenstein as one astronaut put it.

Shuttle astronauts Richard Linnehan and Michael Foreman were so eager to get started on the robot assembly that they got out the hatch early.

The nighttime spacewalk -- expected to last into the wee hours of Sunday -- came close to being drastically altered or even delayed. For nearly two days, a cable design flaw prevented NASA from getting power to Dextre, lying in pieces on its transport bed.

It wasn't until the astronauts gripped Dextre with the space station's mechanical arm Friday night that the robot got the power it needed to wake up and keep its joints and electronics from freezing.

"Dextre is doing much better," said astronaut Garrett Reisman, who performed the first spacewalk with Linnehan on Thursday night. "When he's all put together, he looks a lot like a person. He's got two arms, a body, a head, and he is designed to do basically the same things that we do on a spacewalk."

Reisman said before the flight that Dextre was a little scary and monstrous-looking, and he likened it to Frankenstein coming alive.