1 Jun 2017

A team of robotic experts at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)—known as ROBOs—will collaborate with their NASA counterparts to conduct a series of complex operations when SpaceX’s Dragon reaches the International Space Station (ISS) on June 4.
Lasting 21 days, these operations begin with setting Canadarm2, the Station’s robotic arm, in place for NASA astronaut Jack Fischer. He will use it to capture the free-flying spacecraft on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. ET. The CSA-NASA team will then resume control of the arm to attach Dragon to the ISS.

For the next 12 days, the ROBOs will carefully maneuver Canadarm2 and Dextre, the Canadian robotic repairman, to extract three science experiments from Dragon’s trunk, two of which will be installed on the ISS.
The third experiment, ROSA (the Roll-Out Solar Array), is a technology demonstration. ROSA is lighter and stores more compactly than the existing solar array panels on the ISS, with state-of-the-art deployment technology. Over seven days, the CSA robotics team will perform multiple tests with ROSA attached to Dextre, in collaboration with members of the U.S. science team. After testing is complete, the ROBOs will use Canadarm2 and Dextre to load ROSA back in Dragon’s trunk, which will take two additional days.

Dragon is scheduled to return to Earth on July 2, and will bring back blood and breath samples for two Canadian science experiments, MARROW and Vascular Echo.

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ROBO team at work in the Canadian Space Agency’s Mission Control Room.