Space Station Gets a New Laser, Fruit Flies and Wriggly Worms, Too

Two robotic arms recently completed an unprecedented handoff in orbit, attaching a NASA laser-firing instrument to the exterior of the International Space Station. NASA's Cloud Aerosol Transport System (CATS) instrument arrived at the orbiting lab Jan. 12 inside the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo capsule. On Jan. 22, operators on the ground used a NASA-controlled robotic arm aboard the station to remove CATS from Dragon, then passed the experiment to a Japanese-controlled arm. "The Japanese-controlled arm installed the instrument to the Space Station’s Japanese Experiment Module, making CATS the first NASA-developed payload to fly on the Japanese module," NASA officials wrote in a statement, adding that the maneuver marked "the first time one robotic arm on station has worked in concert with a second robotic arm." More

(Source: Space.com - Jan 30)