HOUSTON –
An orbital inspection of the shuttle Atlantis by astronauts today revealed
little damage to the orbiter's heat shield after launch, and NASA mission managers say they are not overly concerned about a small piece
of torn insulation near the rear of the spacecraft.
The seven
STS-117 astronauts spent their first full day in space performing a detailed,
five-hour inspection of heat shielding on the wings and nose of their
vehicle following its Friday liftoff.
"With Flight
Day Two activities, you're just going around and assessing how the vehicle performed
during ascent, and I am very happy to say that it performed very well,"
said John Shannon, chairmen of NASA's Mission Management Team.
Of
particular concern was how the shuttle's extensively repaired external fuel
tank would perform, after a freak hailstorm in February gouged thousands of
dents and divots in its foam insulation.
"From what
we can tell so far, we did not lose any of the repairs," Shannon said.
"Everything looks exactly like it should, [it] looks like everything stayed in
place."
Engineers
are also analyzing imagery of a 4-inch by 6-inch (10-centimeter by
15-centimeter) section of overturned
insulation blanket on the shuttle's left, aft-mounted Orbital Maneuvering
System (OMS) pods discovered by the astronauts Friday night after reaching
orbit. The current hypothesis is that heat transferred from nearby thermal
protection tiles during the shuttle's climb into space caused a piece of the
blanket to become unstitched.
"There's
not a great deal of concern over it right now, but there's a lot of work left
to be done, and we'll do that in the coming days," Shannon said.
He added
that NASA is prepared to deal with the upturned blanket section if engineers
decide it is problematic for Atlantis' reentry.
"We have a
lot of different options that we can do to go address it," Shannon said,
including tucking the blanket back beneath the tiles, trimming it down, or
covering it with a new tile.
The STS-117
crew is scheduled to perform up to four spacewalks to install new
truss segments and solar arrays on the space station. It should be possible
to squeeze a shuttle repair mission into one of them if necessary, Shannon
said.
A similar
blanket flare-up was observed on the windshield of Discovery during STS-114 in 2005 but posed no
problems for reentry.
STS-117
commander Rick Sturckow and his team will have a busy day ahead of them
tomorrow, as they prepare Atlantis for its rendezvous with the International
Space Station (ISS) Sunday afternoon.
"Atlantis
is on her way to the ISS, and her crew is ready and waiting for us," said lead
shuttle flight director Cathy Koerner.
Shortly
after docking, the ISS and shuttle crews will transfer the new truss segments
from Atlantis to the space stations' robotic arm, where it will await
installation. Also on tap for tomorrow is the official crew exchange between
STS-117 mission specialist Clay Anderson and Expedition 15 flight engineer
Sunita Williams.
NASA is
broadcasting the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-117 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for mission updates and
SPACE.com's video feed.
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