The crew of space shuttle Endeavour, after successfully linking up with the International Space Station, is busy at work Thursday unloading the parts they'll need to build a giant Canadian robot.
Astronauts Robert Behnken and Gregory Johnson were using the station's robotic arm to unload the robot, named Dextre, from the cargo bay of Endeavour.
Dextre -- its full, less catchy name is Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator -- will be temporarily installed on a station girder.
Once it's put together, the robot will have a height of 3.7 metres and a width of 2.4 metres. It will also have two multi-jointed arms, with sensors on the wrists that give his hands a sense of touch.
The robot is designed to do regular tasks outside the station like replacing batteries and wires, and will reduce the number of dangerous space walks astronauts must perform.
But the Endeavour crew will first have to venture into that environment to assemble Dextre's seven pieces, and attach the 1,560-kilogram robot to the outside of the station.
Later Thursday, spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman will begin assembling the robot on the first of five spacewalks planned during Endeavour's 16-day mission.
The space shuttle docked with the ISS late Wednesday.
Before it docked, Endeavour had to do a 360-degree back flip so that photographs could be taken of the shuttle as part of a safety procedure.
The pictures will be examined by engineers to see if the shuttle suffered any damage following Tuesday's rare night-time launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Only 25 per cent of NASA's shuttles have blasted off in the dark and Tuesday's launch was the first since 2006.
In addition to Dextre, Endeavour also brought the first piece of Japan's new space station lab, Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese.
Most of the lab itself will be transported on the next shuttle mission in May.
Japanese engineers and scientists started designing Kibo in 1990 but actual construction was delayed until now, partly because of the Columbia disaster in 2003.
With files from The Associated Press
