Inspection Boom Assembly

Following the Columbia shuttle accident in early 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) was formed to mandate improvements to the shuttle program. One of the requirements was a way for NASA to inspect the underside of the shuttle before reentry.

Building on the technology and experience acquired by MDA in building several generations of space-borne manipulators, MDA developed an extension to the Space Shuttle's robotic arm to perform on-orbit inspections of the Shuttle's thermal protection system. The Inspection Boom Assembly, or IBA, will support inspection of the Shuttle's thermal protection system.

The Inspection Boom is based on preexisting hardware from the Shuttle arm program and is essentially the same design except the arm joints are replaced with aluminum transitions, effectively freezing the joints in place. The tip of the boom is designed to accommodate and interface with a suite of sensors to assess the Orbiter's Thermal Protection System.

Weighing 465 lbs. (excluding sensors), and nearly 50 feet long, the IBA is roughly the same dimensions as the Shuttle Remote Manipulator Arm. This similarity allows the IBA to fit neatly on the starboard side of the shuttle, where a holding mechanism was originally designed to support a second arm. Once in orbit, the Shuttle arm and the Space Station arm can pick up the IBA using grapple fixtures.