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Canada’s robotic handyman on the International Space Station, Dextre, performed his first repair task on August 28th and 29th. A faulty circuit breaker was in need of being swapped out.
Rather than sending a human on a spacewalk to perform the task, Dextre did what it was designed to do, perform a maintenance task. By not having an astronaut perform the repair it saves crew time to perform science experiments and keeps the astronaut out of harms way. All spacewalks come with a degree of risk as space is an unforgiving harsh environment.
Flight controllers in Houston sent the necessary commands to Dextre while engineers at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Saint-Hubert supported them.
