Editor's Note: This story was updated at 7:00
p.m EDT.
Astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery took a
first look at their spacecraft's heat shield today even though they lack a
vital tool to hunt for any damage to the vehicle from its Saturday afternoon
launch.
Discovery
launched toward the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday at 5:02
p.m. EDT (2102 GMT) to deliver Japan's massive Kibo research module to the
orbiting laboratory. But the new orbital room is so large, the shuttle had to
fly without its laser-tipped sensor boom, a required tool for now-standard heat
shield inspections on all NASA shuttle flights.
Instead, Discovery's seven-astronaut crew conducted a
limited survey today using a camera at the tip of the shuttle's 50-foot
(15-meter) robotic arm.
"That sort of gives us a good idea of the situation we're
in before we go on to docking," Discovery shuttle pilot Ken Ham said before
launch. "It's a pretty well thought out plan."
Discovery is set to dock at the space station on Monday
at 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT). But before the shuttle arrives, astronauts aboard
the orbiting lab will take high-resolution photographs of its heat shield -
also a standard safety measure since the 2003 Columbia tragedy - so engineers can
search for any dings in the thousands of heat-resistant tiles coating its nose
and underbelly.
The shuttle astronauts are also slated to also perform a
full heat shield inspection later in their
planned 14-day mission using a 50-foot (15-meter) inspection boom left
outside the space station by a previous shuttle crew.
Commanded by veteran shuttle flyer Mark Kelly,
Discovery's STS-124 astronauts plan to install the Kibo lab and relocate its
storage module during three spacewalks, as well as swap out one member of the
space station's three-man crew. They are also hauling a spare toilet pump to
fix the station's balky Russian-built commode.
About the size of a large tour bus, the $1 billion Kibo
lab module is 37 feet (11 meters) long, weighs about 32,000 (14,514 kg) and has
two windows, a robotic arm and its own, small airlock. It is the second of
three separate segments that make up Japan's
entire Kibo facility, and will join a small storage module already at the
station. A porch-like external platform for space exposure experiments is
slated to launch next year.
Shuttle survey
Ham and his crewmates began today's limited scan of the
heat-resistant panels along Discovery's wing edges just after 11 a.m. EDT (1500
GMT). The survey ran about two and a half hours, but was limited by the
Discovery's robotic arm reach, which is only about half that of combined
arm-inspection boom assembly.
"That means that we can't really look too much underneath
the port wing," shuttle flight director Matt Abbot said before flight, adding
that the upper portions of both wings should be visible.
NASA has kept a close watch on the heat shield integrity
of its shuttle fleet since 2003, when a piece of foam insulation fell from the
shuttle Columbia's external tank and punched a hole in the carbon composite
panels on its left wing leading edge. The damage led to the loss of the orbiter
and its seven-astronaut crew as they reentered the Earth's atmosphere.
Since then, shuttle astronauts have used lasers and
cameras at the end of their shuttle inspection boom to ensure their spacecraft
is in good health. NASA also redesigned its shuttle fuel tanks to limit the
amount of foam insulation shed during liftoff.
Discovery's
STS-124 mission is the first shuttle flight to use a fuel tank built from
scratch with all the new modifications. Mission managers wanted to test the new
tank before using another one to feed the shuttle Atlantis's planned October
launch to the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said
Saturday that an initial survey of launch video footage found about five pieces
of foam debris that popped free from Discovery's external tank after liftoff.
None of them are expected to pose a risk to the shuttle or its crew, he added.
One thin piece appeared to bounce off Discovery and
remain intact, but all of the events occurred after first two minutes and 15
seconds of flight, when debris cannot accelerate fast enough to cause serious
damage to the orbiter's heat shield, Gerstenmaier said.
"Ultimately, we would like to reduce the amount of foam
that comes off the tank," Gerstenmaier said. "I don't think we'll ever get it
to zero, but if we can get it to where it occurs late like it did on this
flight than we're in a good configuration."
NASA is broadcasting the planned launch of
Discovery's STS-124 mission live on NASA TV on Saturday. Click here for SPACE.com's
shuttle mission updates and NASA TV feed.
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