Horikawa lead a 35 strong contingent of NASDA and Toshiba engineers to monitor the Toshiba-developed MFD experiments at Johnson Space Center during Discovery�s latest mission.

MFD is a 1850 Kg, 1.5 meter long robot arm with six degrees of freedom. It simulates the small fine arm attachment that will be attached to the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) which will be able to maneuver, collect and store payload and experimental equipment on the JEM exposed facility.

Although, at 60 billion yen ($US450 million) the MFD comprises a relatively small amount of JEM�s overall 310 billion yen budget ($US2.8 Billion), the glitch-free operation of the test robot ensures NASDA can confidently go ahead with the development of the flight model of RMS.

MFD had a busy program, operated in tandem by Jan Davis and Stephen Robbinson who had spent weeks training at NASDA�s Tsukuba Space Center this spring in preparation.

With five days of tests from flight day two, the two astronauts conducted a series of tests from Discovery�s aft flight Deck including; the Crew-Operated Trajectory Repetition experiment, where the arm repeated a crew operated maneuver, a posture calibration experiment via the arm�s TV camera, a remote inspection using a camera mounted on MFD�s wrist and a remote control video operability enhancement experiment, via payload cameras.

Despite being aided by a compliance control system, where the mission specialist is automatically helped to maneuver the arm - similar to power steering, caution and unfamiliarity with operating the system under microgravity conditions meant that Jan Davis didn�t complete all the first day�s tasks, said Horikawa.

"It�s going to be very important for the future," said Horikawa. While JEM will not employ the system, Horikawa said that reducing astronauts� mundane workloads would release time and money during future manned missions in the 21st century, for science activities.

"It showed that tele-robotics in space is feasible and effective," said Masahiro Aiura, Toshiba�s MFD program manager, who said that MFD�s success would aid similar experiments on ETS-7, scheduled for launch on November 1.

In the short term, MFD will be kept at Kennedy Space Center for three weeks of ground-based reconfirmation tests, before becoming one of NASDA�s more compact museum pieces, said Ryo Okamura, manager of Toshiba�s space robotics and technology development division. Meanwhile the data assimilated will be added into the programming for the JEM robot - RMS, which is due for system level integration next spring or summer.