On Wednesday afternoon, July 21 at 4.58 pm, the most expensive Dutch space project ever will be launched into space. It concerns the European Robotic Arm, or ERA. It is mounted on the Nauka module, a Russian research laboratory that will be linked to the International Space Station. A Russian Proton-M rocket launches the module and robotic arm from the Baykonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The robotic arm is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA) and has been under development since 1985. ESAs Technology Centre">I am in Noordwijk has worked on the robot arm over the past decades. The Netherlands supplied the main contractor and paid two thirds of the costs. In total, the project cost about 360 million euros.
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