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Canadarm2 – A 20-year Odyssey

In mid-July, Canadarm2 will embark on its first major construction job onboard the International Space Station (ISS)—installing a six-and-a-half ton airlock that will enable astronauts to do spacewalks from the Station.

The mission, a crucial step for the future construction of the Station, will mark the culmination of a nearly 20-year odyssey for the people who came up with the unique Canadarm2 concept, brought it to life in metal and electronic components, and shepherded it through the complex political and technical negotiations that won Canada the right to put it on the ISS.

Among these people there was a feeling of euphoria after Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield successfully installed the arm on the Station during shuttle flight STS-100 in April. “I was pretty emotional,” admits Savi Sachdev, Director General of Space Systems for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). “It was truly amazing to see something that was only a dream so many years ago”. Sachdev, who holds a patent on the Canadarm2 design, was a member of the design team at Spar Aerospace Ltd. (now MD Robotics), the Brampton company that built Canadarm2 and its predecessor, the shuttle’s Canadarm.

For CSA President Mac Evans, who was involved in difficult negotiations both within Canada and between Canada and the United States to keep the project on the books and on track, seeing Canadarm2 installed on the Station evoked a feeling of accomplishment “in knowing I played a role in enabling this to happen, having been through the wars getting this thing approved.”

Similarly, Karl Doetsch viewed STS-100 as “the culmination of a major activity that was a very large part of my life.” Now with the International Space University, Doetsch fought “the wars” with Evans as head of Canada’s Space Station Program for more than a dozen years. He was particularly impressed with the unprecedented Canadian contribution to STS-100, which involved not only both Canadarms and Chris Hadfield performing the first Canadian spacewalk, but also the support teams on the ground and other technologies such as the robotic workstation inside the Space Station that astronauts use to control the arm and the Space Vision System that provides visual cues during arm operations.

“There was pride in a job well done by a great team of people with whom I was able to share friendships, difficulties, failures, successes and joy,” said Doetsch. “Canada had no role in human space flight 25 years ago. Today it is a foundation for some very important future Canadian space activities. STS-100 was a very significant Canadian step in human exploration and in establishing permanent human presence in space. It was a great feeling to have been in the right place at the right time and to have had a role in making that time the right time.”

Jim Middleton, now MDR’s Vice President of Business Development, was in charge of the Canadarm project at Spar. He, too, found the launch of STS-100 “quite an emotional moment.After all the years and trials and tribulations, it was quite an experience to see it take off.” But the engineer in him found the most exciting moments came later—when Canadarm2 was lifted up, fully extended, from the metal pallet in which it was launched and when it stepped off the pallet and onto the Station for the first time.

For him, these events provided a graphic validation of all the hard years devoted to designing and building a new and complex technology that provided plenty of challenges. The “proof of the pudding” was when Canadarm2 performed what is known as pitch-plane change—lifting the elbow joint and booms vertically with both “hands” held firm. This can only be done by a seven-degree-of-freedom manipulator and it puts “a tremendous demand on both software and hardware,” said Middleton. “This absolutely demonstrated the system’s functionality. It didn’t get jammed, there were no software bleeps—it did what it was supposed to do and better than we ever anticipated.”

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