Rookie robot joins shuttle crew

This illustration provided by The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) displays "Dextre" (Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator). Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a "monstrous" two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed. Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts.
Space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to blast off Tuesday carrying seven astronauts and an eighth passenger that is in some ways superior: a robot that will take the astronauts' place for many jobs in outer space.

Dextre, as the robot is known, has two arms, each with seven joints that allow the limb to twist and bend more than a human arm. Each of its two hands has pincers to grip objects and built-in socket wrenches to drive bolts.

Dextre will be able to handle items as small as a phone book and as big as a phone booth. Never before has such a sophisticated robot flown in space.

"As spacewalkers, we don't want to put ourselves out of a job," Endeavour astronaut Mike Foreman says. "But I think (the robot) will be a boon."

Endeavour's crew will assemble Dextre and place it on the International Space Station, where it will start work in 2009. Eventually it will shoulder tasks that would otherwise be done by astronauts during risky spacewalks. Ten years in the making, the robot has a working life of 15 years.

Endeavour is scheduled to lift off 2:28 a.m. ET. During the 16-day mission, the longest flight ever to the station, the crew will perform five spacewalks, the most during any station mission. The astronauts' goals, besides adding Dextre:

•Delivering the station's first Japanese section, an equipment room for a Japanese laboratory to be added to the station in May. A February shuttle mission dropped off the station's first European segment, a laboratory.

•Testing the last major safety improvement made after the 2003 breakup of shuttle Columbia, which killed the crew. Astronauts will experiment with a goo for patching holes in the shuttle's heat shield.

•Inspecting a broken wheel that points half the station's solar panels at the sun. The malfunction, first detected last fall, has cut the amount of electricity supplied to the station.

The mission will be an exhausting long haul, Endeavour commander Dom Gorie says, but piecing together the $210 million Dextre will be particularly tough.
Dextre is riding to orbit in nine pieces. Over the course of three spacewalks, astronauts will attach the hands to the robot's 11-foot-long arms. Then they'll lift the arms, which on Earth would weigh 775 pounds each, to Dextre's shoulders and bolt them into place.

"Some assembly required," Foreman jokes. "It reminds me of (being) a dad on Christmas Eve and opening up presents to put together … and wondering what I got myself into."

Dextre will be able to replace nearly 140 parts of the station, such as batteries and circuit boxes. It will do so thanks to a sense of touch, which will allow it to "feel" when it needs to apply more force to slide a component into place. It's expected to aid astronauts not only with spacewalks but making repairs.

Dextre can be operated by either Mission Control or by the crew living on the station. NASA has no estimate of how many hours of astronaut time the robot will save, but the Canadian Space Agency, which built Dextre, says the robot will make repairs to the station as often as six times a year.

"He's almost like Spot the Pet Robot," says Endeavour astronaut Rick Linnehan, who will help put Dextre together. "He's going to go out there and get lots of important work done for you so you don't have to worry about it."

World's Largest Optical Telescope Now Operating in Arizona

In this image released by the Large Binocular Camera team, Rome Observatory, is an image taken by the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Ariz., showing a spiral galaxy 102 million light years away. Considered the world's most powerful telescope, it has taken celestial images using its twin side-by-side, 27.6 foot primary mirrors together, achieving first "binocular" light.

Largest Optical Telescope Now Operating..

The world's most powerful optical telescope is now operating on southeastern Arizona's Mount Graham, capturing striking images of objects millions of light years away.

The Large Binocular Telescope — two 8.4-meter diameter mirrors that together gather more light and have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope — took its first images using both mirrors late last year. The first images were released to the public on Thursday.

There are huge telescopes that operate in other parts of the spectrum — from low-frequency radio waves to far beyond visible light — but no traditional telescope is more powerful.

The telescope is the $120 million crown jewel of the University of Arizona's Mount Graham International Observatory. The telescope is the third atop the 10,500-foot peak, including the Heinrich-Hertz Submillimeter Telescope and the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.
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The largest optical telescope

Measuring 387 inches and 9.82 m, the Keck telescope is known as the world's largest optical telescope. Formerly, the Hale telescope was the largest instrument of its kind until the Keck telescope was built in 1990. It is located at the Mauna Kea Observatory right on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano in Hawaii. The laboratory sits as high as 4,205 m(13,796 ft.)above sea level. This high altitude provides a good view of the sky above with only a little bit of interruption from other light sources.

The instrument was designed in the form of a reflecting type. It is a telescope whose concave-shaped mirrors absorb light and shows what the focused object looks like. All in all,it consists of 36 separate hexagonal segments of mirrors. Each of these segments measures at about 2 meters(6.6 ft.) across. In modern astronomy,the Keck telescope is of great use in knowing the situation of the galaxy and how it affects the planet Earth. It also shows what is happening on the other planets.
An example of an event where the telescope showed a great importance in the field of astronomy was when the instrument showed precise and valuable images on what the planet Jupiter looked like after certain pieces of fragments from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell into it. Another instance was when it proved some scientists' theory that fragments of gamma rays were scattered across the galaxy after the said rays exploded. The Keck also determined and discovered that these fragments are about billions of light years away by measuring how far it is to its optical counterparts in 1997.

The building where the instrument was located is as tall as eight stories high. Placed at about ten meters across the Keck telescope is the Keck 2 which was completed in 1996. These pair of telescopes have strong resolving power which can be compared to a single telescope 90 meters in diameter. It also allowed astronomers to view distant objects throughout the universe.