Crane on the Space station

[Silverwing2002]

This was in the mutimedia section on the front page of Space.com today:

This view of the Earth from astronaut Michael Barratt's helmet camera in this June 5, 2009 spacewalk shows the blue planet below and the International Space Station's Russian segment. The rust-colored circle is a hatch that will be replaced in a June 10 spacewalk. Barratt was riding the end of the station's 50-foot Russian crane to get this view of the outpost. Credit: NASA TV

Please note;
The 'Crane" is actuallly a highly sophisticated robotic arm, and it's Canadian, like the ones on the shuttles.

 

[Zipi]

The 'Crane" is actuallly a highly sophisticated robotic arm, and it's Canadian, like the ones on the shuttles.

Welcome to SDC, but unfortunately I have to say you are incorrect with above comment. They used Russian Strela crane which is a hand operated device. You can search these forums with word Strela. Also some discussion about it can be found from:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=908&p=25990&hilit=strela#p25990

And Nasa has also some documentation about it:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/new ... s02-03.txt
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stati ... eva18.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stati ... eva22.html (the latest EVA which you are talking about)

Wikipedia has only German language article about it:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strela_(ISS) (Google translated)

 

[JonClarke]

"Hand operated" does not automatically negate "sophisticated".

Jon

 

[Zipi]

"Hand operated" does not automatically negate "sophisticated".

Absolutely true, sorry if my selection of words made it sound like so.