Canada Exploring Options

The Canadian space industry has developed a specialty in robotics. Canada built the huge robotic arm on the space shuttle-- the Canadarm-- and now is looking at building a similar appendage for NASA's Orion spacecraft. Current plans for Orion don't include such an arm-- Orion, as a capsule, won't have a payload bay, which is where the Canadarm does much of its work-- but if Orion is used to service future space platforms as well as take astronauts to the Moon and beyond, a robotic arm would be useful.

Canada is also studying the possibility of using its expertise in robotics in a Canadian-led lunar rover mission. That puts Canada in a small knot of nations and private groups which have either flown their first lunar mission recently or plan to do so in the near future.