CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space
shuttle Atlantis' foam-covered fuel tank did shed some debris midway
through today's successful
launch, but the events are not believed to be a threat to the spacecraft,
NASA officials said Saturday.
Cameras
mounted to Atlantis' external tank recorded two foam shedding events - one of
which appears to have struck the orbiter -between four and six minutes into the
8.5-minute launch, NASA astronaut Tony Antonelli, serving as spacecraft
communicator, told shuttle
commander Brent Jett.
Antonelli
said the foam debris seen just after the four-minute mark appeared to hit the
orbiter's tile-lined undercarriage, but video showed no apparent damage after a
preliminary report.
A second
foam-shedding event at the five-minute, 27-second mark seemed to originate from
the outboard section of a 17-inch liquid oxygen feed line, Antonelli said,
adding that ice was also seen after main engine cutoff.
Both events
occurred well after the 2.5-minute mark, when the atmosphere outside Atlantis becomes
so thin it cannot sweep debris back fast enough to pose a critical threat to
the shuttle, NASA officials said. Shuttle officials have also said that they did expect minor foam shedding events during each launch.
"That's
good news that if all came off later than the area of the time of interest,"
Jett told Antonelli.
In a
post-launch briefing here at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), NASA launch
integration manager LeRoy Cain also mentioned the observed foam loss, and
cautioned that any evaluations at this point are very preliminary.
"The things
that folks did see, in a very, very preliminary look, looked well into the
ascent phase where we really don't have debris concerns," said Cain, who
chaired the Mission Management Team (MMT) for Atlantis' STS-115 mission.
NASA will
hold its first in-depth briefing on Atlantis' launch imagery at about 4:30 p.m.
EDT (2030 GMT).
Atlantis' STS-115
mission is NASA's third shuttle flight - and the first dedicated
International Space Station (ISS) construction effort - since the 2003 loss of seven astronauts
aboard Columbia, which suffered critical damage from foam launch debris and
broke apart during reentry.
ISS-bound
mission
Atlantis
rocketed spaceward with Jett and five other astronauts aboard at 11:14:55 a.m.
EDT (1514:55 GMT) bound for the ISS, where its 17.5-ton
cargo of new trusses and solar arrays will be attached to the outpost's
port side.
"What you
saw today was a flawless countdown, a majestic launch," NASA chief Michael
Griffin said during a post-launch briefing here at the Kennedy Space Center
(KSC). "It was tough to get here."
A fuel tank
sensor problem that scrubbed a launch attempt Friday was absent during today's
launch countdown, and a shuttle fuel cell cooling system issue that prevented a
Sept. 6 liftoff also performed as expected, NASA said, adding that launch pad
lightning strikes and a tropical depression also plagued the mission.
"The
countdown itself went exceedingly well," NASA launch director Michael Leinbach
said. "Which should really not be surprising considering how many times we've
tried it."
NASA
officials are now looking ahead to the shuttle's 11-day ISS
assembly mission, which begins with a Monday docking after the STS-115 crew
conducts a thorough examination of Atlantis' heat shield tomorrow.
"That will
be an extremely challenging flight," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate
administrator of space operations said. "The teams are prepared, they're ready
to execute and they're ready to go."
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