Space Shuttle Canadarm Design Drawings

Space Shuttle Canadarm Design Drawings

A collection of design drawings for the Space Shuttle robot arm by Roy Street, a British engineer who was a Senior Designer at Spar Aerospace, Toronto. In the early 1970s, Spar carried out design studies for a robotic arm that would deploy and retrieve space hardware from the payload bay of the Shuttle orbiter. They were appointed the prime subcontractor in July 1975, for the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the robot arm, which would become Canada's most famous robotic and technological achievement.

The challenge facing the design team was enormous. To perform its role effectively in space, the arm required similar dexterity to a human arm. It also had to be safe, reliable, capable of precise movement, and able to withstand the extreme environment of space. Such a device had not been attempted before, so all the components had to be designed from scratch.

The robot arm, named Canadarm in honour of the country who built it, was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-2) on November 13, 1981. Thirty years of successful operations followed aboard all of NASA’s other shuttles: Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. During this time, it amassed an impressive list of achievements; including helping to repair the Hubble Space Telescope and constructing the International Space Station. It was retired along with the Space Shuttle programme after mission STS-135 in 2011, although its legacy lived on through the Canadarm2 - a more advanced, longer version used on the International Space Station.