CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The dinged heat shield tiles on NASA's shuttle Endeavour
performed much better than expected during the orbiter's landing today and
marked the only blemish on an otherwise flawless spacecraft, the space agency
said Tuesday.
Slight tile
damage aside, Endeavour is in fine shape after the shuttle's first flight
to the International Space Station (ISS) in almost five years, NASA chief
Michael Griffin said.
"Actually
the orbiter overall was pretty clean," Griffin said. "We had one kind
of ugly ding and we paid appropriate attention to it."
Endeavourtouched down
at 12:32:16 p.m. EDT (1632:16 GMT) here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to conclude a successful ISS construction flight. The landing completed the overhauled
shuttle's first spaceflight since late 2002.
NASA
engineers are discussing what types
of modifications, if any, will be required to the shuttle fuel tank bracket
that loosed a 0.021-pound (about one-third of an ounce) piece of foam
insulation during Endeavour's Aug. 8 launch. The debris bounced off a strut to
carve a small ding into Endeavour's belly-mounted heat tiles.
The chipped
tile posed no risk to the shuttle or its crew, and weathered the searing heat
of reentry remarkably well, NASA said. A first look after landing showed only
slightly more erosion, not the extensive surface damage predicted by NASA
tests, and will be a valuable asset in heat shield analysis, the agency added.
"We're
going to be able to understand exactly how this stuff performed," Bill
Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, in a
post-landing briefing. "What is really important is we have kind of a
before and after, which sometimes we haven't had before."
Canadian
Space Agency (CSA) president Laurier Boisvert said Endeavour's successful
return meant a great deal to his home country, and not only because the shuttle
carried Saskatchewan-born spaceflyer Dafydd "Dave" Williams. Williams
set a new Canadian spacewalking record during three excursions and almost 18
hours of orbital work.
The robotic
arm inspection boom and laser tools used to scan Endeavour's dinged tiles were
Canadian in origin and a source of pride for the CSA, Boisvert said.
"It's
probably the most photographed tile in the world," he added.
Space
station progress
Griffin lauded the work of Endeavour's
STS-118 astronaut crew, which primed the space station for future construction
later this year.
"It's
getting to look like a real space station now," Griffin said.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Scott Kelly, the
13-day mission delivered more than two tons of cargo, additional spare
parts, a new starboard-side girder and included the replacement of a broken U.S. gyroscope. The shuttle crew landed a day early to avoid any impacts to their Houston,
Texas-based Mission Control by Hurricane Dean, though the storm ultimately
posed no threat to the NASA center.
"They
just rolled with the punches and they did a great job," Gerstenmaier said
of the crew's effort to adapt to changes. "They did a flawless job."
Endeavour's
crew included teacher-turned-astronaut
Barbara Morgan, who made her first flight since joining NASA 22 years ago
as the backup to Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe before the ill-fated 1986 Challenger
mission.
Griffin said Morgan was in good health
after the spaceflight but required a bit more time to readapt to Earth's
gravity.
With the
success of STS-118, the ISS is now about 60 percent complete. NASA plans at
least 11 more shuttle missions set to finish space station assembly by the
September 2010 retirement date for its three-orbiter fleet.
"It is
an awesome accomplishment that we're in the middle of, we're not done with
it," Griffin said. "Every flight is a hard flight. Every flight is the
most important flight, and that will remain so until we're done."
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