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More Details for 2008-03-16

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Astronauts Rick Linnehan and Mike Foreman spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station today attaching the two arms of the Canadian Space Agency's Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre.

Dextre's arms, each 11 feet long, provide the robot with the ability to work outside the station to install small orbital replacement units and conduct other maintenance tasks. Dextre can operate on the end of the station's robotic arm or ride independently on the Mobile Base System.

Linnehan and Foreman completed the second spacewalk of the mission removing some of the thermal covers that had been protecting Dextre during its installation. Both astronauts coordinated their movements with Mission Specialist Robert Behnken, who was serving inside Endeavour as the spacewalk choreographer.

Meanwhile, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takao Doi configured experiment and stowage racks within the newly installed Japanese Experiment Logistics Moduleâ€"Pressurized Section. The module is a storage facility that provides stowage space for experiment payloads, samples and spare items.

Linnehan and Foreman ventured outside the space station at 6:49 p.m. CDT Saturday to begin the 7-hour, 8-minute spacewalk, which ended at 1:57 a.m. The spacewalk was the second in a series of five scheduled for the STS-123 mission.

Wake-up time for both the shuttle and station crews is 2:28 p.m. Sunday. The 10 crew members will spend the day working on various cargo items that are to be transferred back and forth between Endeavour and the International Space Station. The combined crews also will continue configuring racks in the new Japanese module while ground controllers test the electronics systems of Dextre now that it has grown arms. The standard spacewalk procedures review, this one for the third spacewalk, comes toward the end of the crew day.