This is fascinating, but I do have an off topic question: why does a robotic arm need a thermal blanket?
Imagine all the things you would need to do if you were running a marathon on a course that alternated half a dozen times between a blizzard and a death valley heat wave... you would have to work with many many constraints and come up with a solution that worked for opposite extremes while not interfering with the thing you’re actually trying to do.
Of course, if there's a CPU in there that's drawing lots of power (e.g. image processing), it will have to shed that heat. But if there's only some electronics in there that don't eat up too much power, there's a good chance they'll use the thermal blanket (and even heaters) to keep them warm.
I don't have the details on the Canadarm, but I can tell you that a lot of electronics on satellites use thermal blankets and heating elements to keep warm.