Dangling Dextre Digs out Docked Dragon Depot prior to Station Departure

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Backdropped against a cloudy portion of Earth, Canadas Dextre robotic handyman and Canadarm2 dig out the trunk of SpaceXs Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS after completing a task 225 miles above the home planet. Credit: NASA

To close out their final week aboard the International Space Station, three of the six Expedition 39 crew members are completing their unloading tasks inside the docked commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo freighter and other duties while teams at Mission Control in Houston conduct delicate robotics work outside with dazzling maneuvers of the Dextre robot to remove the last external experiment from the vessels storage truck.

See a dazzling gallery of photos of Dextre dangling outside the docked Dragon depot above and below.

On Monday, May 5, the robotics team at NASA Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston carefully guided Canadas Dextre robotic handyman attached to the end of the 57-foot long Canadarm2 to basically dig out the final payload item housed in the unpressurized trunk section at the rear of the SpaceX Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS.

Dextre stands for Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator and was contributed to the station by the Canadian Space Agency. It measures 12 feet tall and is outfitted with a pair of arms and an array of finely detailed tools to carry out intricate and complex tasks that would otherwise require spacewalking astronauts.

The Canadarm2 with Dextre in its grasp conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV

The massive orbiting outpost was soaring some 225 miles above the home planet as Dextres work was in progress to remove the Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science, or OPALS, from the Dragons truck.

The next step is to install OPALS on the Express Logistics Carrier-1 (ELC-1) depot at the end of the stations port truss on Wednesday.

Mondays attempt was the second try at grappling OPALS. The initial attempt last Thursday was unsuccessful due to a problem gripping the payloads grapple fixture with the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre, NASA reported.

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Dangling Dextre Digs out Docked Dragon Depot prior to Station Departure