Space shuttle astronauts began the first of five spacewalks outside the international space station Thursday night.

NASA decided to press ahead with the spacewalk despite a technical glitch with the giant robot, named Dextre, that needs to be assembled in space.

The spacewalk began around 9:20 p.m. EDT Thursday and was scheduled to last until about 4 a.m. EDT Friday.

The chairman of the mission management team stressed that the power loss would not affect astronauts' work to attach the robot's hands to its 11-foot arms. Engineers were scrambling to find a solution to the problem and it was unclear if it would affect the mission's second spacewalk, also dedicated to robot assembly.

Dextre -- which cost more than $200 million -- is one of the Canadian Space Agency's main contributions to the space station.

The 3,400-pound robot, when assembled, is 12 feet high and has a shoulder span of nearly 8 feet. It's designed to help spacewalkers with some of their more routine maintenance chores, with the eventual goal of reducing the amount of time astronauts spend outside.

Endeavour's crew got a wake-up call late Thursday afternoon: the Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night," which was intended to get them in the spacewalk spirit.

Garrett Reisman, who's making his first spacewalk, responded by saying, "It gets us all pumped up and we're ready to go out the hatch and do it all, have a ball, S-A-T-U-R, Saturday night!"

Reisman was joined on the spacewalk by fellow astronaut Richard Linnehan.

Besides hooking up Dextre's hands, Reisman and Linnehan were also helping attach a Japanese storage compartment to the space station. The compartment is the first part of Japan's massive Kibo lab, which means "hope." The main part of the lab won't arrive until May.

Endeavour's astronauts, meanwhile, got some good news: The object that appeared to strike the shuttle's nose right at liftoff Tuesday, possibly a bird, actually missed the spacecraft altogether. Endeavour's thermal shielding looks to be in good shape for re-entry in two weeks.

Additional Resource:

• NASA