Canadian space tools: Arms great, eyes need work | Globalnews.ca (2025)

Original publication date: Dec. 15, 1998

Here’s the verdict from space on Canada’s contributions to the new International Space Station: great arms, but the eyes are a little fuzzy.

The Russian and American crew of the shuttle Endeavour wrapped up the first construction mission yesterday and will land in Florida today. It will take more than 40 flights to build the orbiting space station.

The six crew members carried a U.S.-built module into space and attached it to a Russian module sent up three weeks ago on an unmanned rocket.

Along the way they used a shuttle-ful of Canadian technology, especially an upgraded version of the familiar Canadarm by Spar Aerospace Ltd., and a mixed bag of cameras and computers called the Advanced Space Vision System, from Neptec Design Group of Kanata.

Astronaut Nancy Currie told a news conference from space yesterday that the new and improved Canadarm is even better than the original.

“The real arm was even better, if you can believe it, than the simulator. It just flew perfectly,” she said.

When she used the arm to lift the 20-tonne American module out of the shuttle’s cargo bay, she had just three centimetres of clearance on each side of it. That’s about two fingers’ width of space on each side of the truck-sized module.

“It just flew straight out of the bay,” she marvelled yesterday. “I just can’t speak more highly of the performance of the Canadian arm.”

That’s good news because the arm will be used by many astronauts — including Canadians Marc Garneau and Julie Payette — to build the rest of the orbiting space station.

But it’s even better news in that Canada’s biggest contribution to this new station will be a bigger, stronger and even more sophisticated version of the Canadarm. Fixed to the outside of the space station, it will be a crane and all-purpose tool for lifting, moving and building.

Now, about those eyes.

The Space Vision System teams up a set of cameras with computers that analyse where a target is in relation to the shuttle. For example, it helps an astronaut on the shuttle see the exact position of a nearby satellite, or a space station during docking.

It will be instrumental in building the space station. And it needs work — especially when it comes to focusing and the ability to zoom in and out.

“The Space Vision System performed well for a system that’s still under development,” said U.S. astronaut James Newman. “The challenge is in using the cameras.

“It does have some challenges ahead but it also has some capabilities,” he said. “I have to say it is not fully operational yet. It is a system in development. We’re looking for good things in the future, but it will need some work.”

Another hitch the crew ran into was the propulsion system carried by astronauts who go on spacewalks to do tasks they can’t perform inside a shuttle.

Astronaut Jerry Ross, who took three spacewalks on this mission, said this propulsion system seems to have a software glitch that underestimated by 50 per cent the amount of compressed gas inside it. Releasing compressed nitrogen gas is what makes the system work.

“It’s a little frustrating,” he said. “We’ll need to pursue this vigorously.”

Astronauts on space walks are tethered to the shuttle. But tethers aren’t foolproof and the propulsion system is an important safety measure.

When a shuttle is docked to the space station, there’s no way it can hurry after a lost crew member. “It would be a terrible scene to see an astronaut drifting over the horizon,” Mr. Ross said.

Still, the crew got its work done. A space station is now in orbit, or at least the beginnings of it are. And it brings together 16 countries for the first time in space: the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and 11 European countries.

As well, the construction job stayed on schedule despite harsh difficulties such as intense changes in lighting conditions and temperature between light and dark sides of the Earth, lack of gravity, and radiation.

“We keep pinching ourselves and saying, `It can’t be real.’ It’s going so well and everything is so right and it looks so good,” said shuttle commander Robert Cabana.

The crew would love to stay a few more days in orbit, he said, “But unfortunately we accomplished all we set out to do.”