The International Space Station's 58-foot robotic arm, Canadarm2, cannot be moved after a routine walk-off maneuver, according to Ars Technica. The arm and the mobile transporter that guides it along the station's truss are both stuck. NASA was working as of Sunday evening to determine whether the problem lies in software or data, or in the hardware itself, but a spokesperson had not commented by late Monday morning.
The malfunction has direct business implications for cargo operations. Canadarm2 was designed to grapple incoming spacecraft and move them to berthing ports; the first versions of SpaceX's Dragon, Northrop's Cygnus, and Japan's HTV-X all depend on that capability. Modern Dragon and Starliner dock autonomously, but with SpaceX planning to retire Dragon within four years, NASA's other principal cargo vehicles would be hard to accommodate without a working arm. The arm is also used to move large external hardware and prepare for spacewalks.
Canadarm2 launched in 2001 with a 15-year design lifetime, so it has been operating more than a decade beyond expectations. The station itself is approaching its 30th anniversary, and much of its hardware has spent decades in hard vacuum. NASA's effort to replace the station with privately developed outposts has not gone smoothly, making the current aging infrastructure a growing operational and financial risk.