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More Details for 2008-03-17

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The International Space Station's newest robot is just one spacewalk away from being fully assembled.

The space shuttle Endeavour's crew members received their wakeup call at 1:31 p.m. CDT. Their wakeup song for the day was 'Sharing the World,' a song written by Pilot Gregory H. Johnson's brother.

Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan and Robert L. Behnken will spend the day outside the station, performing the mission's third spacewalk. During this spacewalk, the spacewalkers will be finishing up the assembly of Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. They'll add a tool holster, a stowage platform and a camera system to the robot, and then remove thermal covers that have been protecting the robot's system during its assembly.

The spacewalkers will also get the Spacelab Logistics Pallet on which the robot was assembled ready for return to Earth in the shuttle's cargo bay, and install some spare equipment -a yaw joint for the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, and two spare direct current switching units -on the station's exterior for future use.

Before heading back into the station, Behnken will also install on the station's exterior Materials International Space Station Experiment 6A and 6B. MISSE 6 is a science experiment that will gather data on how materials and coatings are affected by the extreme environment of space. It's scheduled to stay outside the station for about six months.

The spacewalk is scheduled to start at 6:23 p.m. and should last about six and a half hours.