The robotic arm of China's space station has begun to play a role, and it has completed the test of transposing the cargo spacecraft. According to the China Manned Space Engineering Office quoted by CCTV, starting from 6:12 on January 6, 2022, after about 47 minutes of cross-system close coordination, the space station's robotic arm transferred the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft to another hatch of the node module at 6:59, and the test has been a complete success.
In the early morning of January 6, according to the pre-set instructions, one end of the 10-meter-long space station robotic arm was located near the node module, and the other end captured the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft (with a total weight of 13.5 tons), after which the spacecraft and the space station node capsule were unlocked and separated, and at 6:12, the robotic arm began to perform a "Qiankun Great Shift", transposing the spacecraft, the transposition method is to use the core capsule node capsule as the center of the ball as the center of the circle for plane transposition, and then the reverse operation begins to dock. Until the other interface between the cargo spacecraft and the core module node module is re-docked and locked, the entire "nest" test process is successfully completed.
This is the first time in China's manned space project to use the space station robotic arm to operate a large spacecraft for transposition test, preliminarily tested the feasibility of the robotic arm operating spacecraft or space station module translocation, the space station module transposition technology and the large-load control technology of the robotic arm preliminarily verified the pass, which also accumulated experience for the on-orbit assembly and construction of China's follow-up space station and other spacecraft.
The mechanical arm on China's space station is developed by the Fifth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Group, which is the first mechanical arm with omnidirectional seven degrees of freedom ability, with the movement ability similar to the human arm, which is currently the space intelligent robotic arm system with the highest complexity, the largest scale and the highest control accuracy in the international similar aerospace products, the weight of this "big country heavy weapon" is about 738 kg, the length is 10.2 meters, it is not too much to call it a "space giant hand", it can carry up to 25 tons of weight, so if there is a fulcrum, It just moves the entire core capsule of the space station.
The robotic arm also has a space station cabin crawling function, the starting point of the "end effector" can easily dock with the space station module on the "target adapter", continuous conversion can achieve the crawling function outside the space station, it is likely to be installed or has been installed on the camera, so that it can also move to monitor the situation outside the space station, or check the possible problem conditions on the outer wall of the space station.
Some friends may ask, can this robotic arm grasp satellites? Just like the Operation of the Chinese Space Station in the American drama "Space Force" to cut off the solar wing of an American satellite with a robotic arm scissor hand? In some states it is possible! If the space station and the satellite are walking side by side, and the speed difference is not much, then the front end of the robotic arm is equipped with a scissor hand, which can cut off the satellite's solar sail panel.
But in reality, spacecraft in different orbits are very fast to each other, usually up to several kilometers per second, faster than the speed of a cannonball, just like we can't touch a flying shell, and a robotic arm can't touch a spacecraft that is so fast. This is also why in July and October 2021, when the two starlink satellites of the US spaceX company approached the Chinese space station, we all took "emergency collision avoidance" measures.
After the launch of two experimental modules of more than 20 tons on China's space station this year, it will also move the experimental module, or help astronauts implement out-of-module activities, and after the experimental module docks with the core module of the space station, a small arm will be installed, and the total length will increase to about 15 meters.
Resources:
"CCTV Network" January 6, 2022 article "Space Station Robotic Arm Turned into Cargo Spacecraft Test Completely Successful"
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