This
story was updated at 2:50 p.m. EST.
Astronauts
aboard NASA’s shuttle Atlantis scanned their spacecraft’s heat
shield today for any signs of dings or divots as they prepare for a weekend
arrival at the International Space Station (ISS).
Commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Stephen Frick,
Atlantis’ seven-astronaut crew used a sensor-tipped extension of their
shuttle’s robotic arm to hunt for any damage caused by falling debris
during its Thursday
launch into orbit. Their detailed inspection wrapped up around 2:40 p.m. EST
(1940 GMT) Friday.
Cameras watching Atlantis’ liftoff and mounted to its
external tank returned
views of what appeared to be three small pieces of foam insulation falling
from the orbiter’s 15-story fuel tank about two minutes and 15 seconds
after liftoff.
“It’s really hard to tell what they are,”
said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for
space operations, just after launch. “It’s fairly small foam
loss.”
But, Gerstenmaier said, engineers will have a better
handle on the extent of the debris and any possible impacts after completing
their analysis of video and images beamed back by the shuttle’s crew.
“We’ll
take our time to make sure we understand what we’re seeing there,”
said LeRoy Cain, chair of Atlantis’ mission management team, after
Thursday’s launch.
NASA has kept a close eye on fuel tank foam and other debris
at launch since the tragic loss of the
shuttle Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew on Feb. 1, 2003. The agency
held a somber memorial last week to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the
tragedy and honor the memories of the astronauts killed in the Columbia, Challenger and Apollo 1 accidents.
Frick and his STS-122 crewmates are flying a planned 11-day
flight to the ISS, where they will install the European Space
Agency’s Columbus laboratory during their mission’s three
spacewalks. They are due to dock at the space station at 12:25 p.m. EST (1725
GMT) on Saturday.
Mission control roused the spaceflyers early
Friday with the song “Book of Love” by Peter Gabriel, a tune chosen
for STS-122 mission specialist Leopold Eyharts by his wife and children.
“Happy
to hear this song,” said Eyharts, an ESA astronaut who will join the
space station’s Expedition 16 crew during STS-122. He thanked his family
and friends in English and French for choosing it. “It has been a
somewhat hard day for them.”
An up-close look
Atlantis astronauts grappled Atlantis’ 50-foot
(15-meter) inspection boom with the shuttle’s robotic arm to begin
today’s heat shield survey and returned it after the scan finished.
“It takes about six hours to do, it’s a long
day,” said Atlantis mission specialist Stanley Love, the chief
shuttle robotic arm operator, in a NASA interview. “We’ll rotate
four of our crewmembers through it so just about everybody gets a shot.”
Heat shield inspections are a now-standard activity for
every NASA shuttle mission since the agency resumed orbiter flights in 2005
following the Columbia accident.
In addition to today’s inspection, astronauts aboard
the ISS routinely conduct a photographic survey a shuttle’s heat shield
just before docking and return the images to Earth for
analysis. A second detailed inspection near the end of a shuttle mission allows
engineers to search for damage caused by micrometeorites and orbital debris.
Laser sensors and cameras at the tip of Atlantis’
inspection boom, which effectively double’s the reach of the
orbiter’s robotic arm, allow engineers an extremely detailed look at the
heat-resistant carbon composite tiles and panels that protect a shuttle against
the searing heat of reentry during landing.
“Of course, you’ve got a total of about a 100
feet of articulated robotic machinery out there and it’s fairly close to
your sensitive heat shield,” said Love, adding that he and his crewmates
will take great care in wielding the inspection boom to avoid bumping their
heat shield. “So it takes a lot of vigilance from the crewmembers to run
the surveys.”
Staff writer
Dave Mosher contributed to this report from Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
NASA is
broadcasting Atlantis' STS-122 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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