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I'll be the person using the shuttle robotic arm.

It definitely helps to have been through the arm training flow before and to have used the arm on orbit, and it also gives me the confidence to know that our training facilities are really good, that when you get up there, you feel like you've been there.

Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.

It's fun to work the robotic arm in part because it's really a team effort.

To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over.

When this space walk will be completed, then the arm will be fully operational and ready for the next activity that will be pretty much the testing, the first flight testing of the space station arm.

You don't want to stand too close to a robot arm; it can turn your head to mush.

During that space walk there will be some repositioning of the power so that the arm can be fully controlled by the robotic station that is in the Lab.

After assembly complete, when we have a larger crew on orbit, a more complex vehicle, more laboratories and more robot arms, maybe we'll have room for specialists. But right now we don't.

In the Astronaut Office we're never totally out of training, we always keep our hand in it. But after five years, things have changed and so it's been good to get back into the flow and relearn a lot of things.