How Canadarm2 Works

Rebecca Bracken: Contributed by the Canadian space agency, the Canadarm2 is now an invaluable part of the international space station. Hi! Rebecca Bracken and welcome to Watchmojo.com. Today, we'll be checking up the simulator, the astronauts used to train themselves to use this tool. So, as I understand that there is two different Canadarms the Canadarm1 and Canadaram2. What is the difference between each of these? Christophe Belzile: One -- more in the 80s, the other one was sent up there in 2001. The main difference is the shuttle arm the one on the space shuttle comes back to earth after the shuttle machine whereas the Canadarm2 on the space station is there permanently, so every part has to be replaceable on orbit or in space. Rebecca Bracken: What is the Canadarm2 design to do? Christophe Belzile: Its main purpose is to build the space stations, so assemble or something. Without it, it wouldn't be possible to build the space station. Rebecca Bracken: How are the astronauts trained to use it? Christophe Belzile: Every astronaut who uses the Canadarm2 comes here for two week training session. We do what we called unloaded so it's just moving the arm without anything on it and we also do loaded operations, which is with a pay loader or component of the space station. Rebecca Bracken: This may sound like a simplistic question, but how does it work? Christophe Belzile: It's an arm with joints, little bit similar to I guess to our arm. It has some in joints on it. There are basically electric motors with gear boxes, runs on about 1200 watts of power. The same power is the hair drier and to the largest thing you can move is the space shuttle. What we have here is the interface that we have on the space station that -- has used to control the arm. We have camera views from the arm, from the space station, and from the space shuttle. We have the two joysticks or hand controllers as column to control the arm and we have the laptop, which is the principle interface. We also have this panel here with green buttons to control some of the cameras and control some other functions on the arm. I'm go in with the end of the arm and go grab a specialized fixture. So I'm going to start by just putting in a command to move the arm and its going to move somewhat slowly, it's one of the important things that we teach here is try to be smooth in your inputs. Essentially, what we are trying to do is keep the white dot within the white circle and the green cross here as on the black circle, and then we want to get the tips of the white lines on each -- between the red lines. What are going to do is pull the trigger down here and that's going to start an auto sequence to capture the fixture. It's going to start drawing it in and we're going to get solid interface with the payload, and then capture is complete. Now, the next step would be pulling it out. What its doing here is at the end of the arm, there is three cables that are going around the shaft that comes out of other specialized fixture that lines a sub, and then there is a mechanism that drives in or the end, and then make sure that we have solid interface. That's how the arm moves objects and has to have the specialized fixture.