Dextre Lives! Space Robot Gets Power

Dextre's finally getting some juice. Astronauts aboard the international space station solved a glitch last night and got power flowing to their partially built robot, the AP reports. Now they can go ahead with a spacewalk tonight to finish assembling it. “There was obviously some real concern over the last day or two for getting that powered up,” said one official.

During tonight's spacewalk, the second of a planned five, astronauts will connect Dextre’s arms and torso. When it's finished, Dextre will help with future space station construction and cut down on the number of spacewalks needed. The shuttle Endeavor delivered the $200 million robot to the station disassembled, along with the first part of a Japanese space lab. Astronauts entered that room for the first time today. (More NASA stories.)