On March 11th, 2008 the Space Shuttle is scheduled to launch its next mission to the International Space Station with Dextre, an incredibly dexterous Canadian robotic assistant that can attach on to the end of the Canadian supplied robotic manipulator arm. Capable of bolting and unbolting external battery packs, attaching power and data cables, and swapping out experimental units as needed, Dextre will offload some of the time crews would otherwise need to spend out doing an EVA. He is built to withstand the rigors of a full vacuum, the harsh dose of radiation on its electronics and the constant temperature cycling from -150 degrees centigrade to +150 degrees centigrade. Dextre was built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), the same company that Odyssey Moon hired to be our Prime Contractor.

MDA is currently working on Phase A of the designs for our lunar missions and we have a lot of confidence in them. After all they have built most of the robotic equipment that is currently used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. There is a lot that goes into creating space hardened flight hardware. It has to be thermal, vacuum and vibration tested and qualified. It also has to be light enough to launch! In space there are a million things that can go wrong. That is why we are so delighted to be working a team that has such extensive spaceflight hardware experience-- and not just any hardware, hardware that NASA allows to operate near its vehicles and near its crewmembers, which is a whole other layer of safety reviews right there!

So we are confident that together with MDA we can create a system that is robust, reliable, and gets the job done. Meanwhile, we are happy to cheer on Dextre and wish NASA and the STS-123 crew a great mission.