Article Posted on : - Aug 25, 2011

Expedition 28 Flight Engineer Mike Fossum prepares Robonaut for its first activation. Photo: NASA TV.

WASHINGTON (BNS): NASA's Robonaut 2 (R2) - the first dexterous humanoid robot in space- on Monday woke up in the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time.

R2, as the robot is called, was delivered to the International Space Station on STS-133 – the last flight of space shuttle Discovery – in February, but due to the astronaut’s busy schedule of shuttle missions and science experiments, the station crew hadn’t been able to do more than unpack it, according to a news report by NASA.

On Monday, Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Satoshi Furukawa hooked R2 up inside the Destiny laboratory, and teams on the ground sent power to the robot for the first time in space.

"Everything came alive, we started getting video out of Robonaut’s eyes. Everything worked exactly as we expected it to. It was a very, very exciting time," Nic Radford, Robonaut deputy project manager, was quoted as saying in the report.

R2, which was developed by General Motors, has a head that looks like a sleek metallic-looking helmet, a torso, two arms and two hands with fingers which operate a lot like human fingers.

But, while it has no legs, R2 can and will carry out a number of tasks aboard the ISS with its fully functional arms and fingers.