A pair of NASA spacewalkers replaced a faulty gripper on the end of the International Space Station’s Canadian-built robotic arm today during an outing that lasted nearly seven hours. One of the 440-pound grippers, officially known as Latching End Effectors, anchors the arm to the station, while the other serves as a “hand” that can latch onto arriving spacecraft or other hardware. Today’s repairmen were Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei. Two more spacewalks are planned on Oct. 10 and 18 to lubricate the new gripper and replace a couple of external cameras.
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