This story
was updated at 3:48 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON
— Astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis inspected their spacecraft's
sensitive heat shield Tuesday for any signs of damage incurred during launch.
The
checkout is a now-standard precaution and NASA has no specific cause for
concern after Monday's smooth
liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., mission managers
said. Commander Charlie Hobaugh and his six-astronaut crew used an
inspection pole tipped with laser sensors and cameras to scan the orbiter's
wing edges and nose cap for new dings or scratches.
"If
there's been any impacts, things that have come off the tank or some spare
debris, or something has hit something, we can take a look at it with the
sensor packages and try to determine if it's something that is kind of benign
or something worth fixing with [a spacewalk]," said mission specialist
Leland Melvin in a preflight interview. "And so we'll survey the port
wing, the starboard wing and the nose cap and then make sure that everything's
safe."
The survey
began early Tuesday and was expected to last about six hours, but the astronauts were ahead of schedule. They attached 50-foot (15-meter) inspection boom to the end of the
shuttle's already 50-foot (15-meter) robotic arm and used its cameras and laser
sensors to scan Atlantis'
most sensitive areas.
"It's
been very refined, well-scripted, developed over numerous missions, a procedure
that we go through now," Hobaugh said. "It's a long day. It's a lot
of intensive arm ops obviously but what we do is we rotate our crew members
through to keep 'em fresh."
Today's
inspection has been part of every
shuttle mission plan after the tragic Columbia accident in 2003, when a
piece of insulating foam from that shuttle's external fuel tank broke off and struck
the orbiter's wing during launch, damaging the heat shield and leading to the
loss of the spacecraft during re-entry. Seven astronauts were killed.
Since then,
NASA has devised new heat shield inspection and repair methods, as well as
modified shuttle fuel tanks to reduce the amount of foam debris during launch.
NASA officials said Atlantis' launch looked relatively clean.
Bill
Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, said NASA
observed three small pieces of foam fall from Atlantis' fuel tank during
launch, but that they occurred too late in the liftoff to cause harm.
"They
were minor because they were after the time when they can really do damage to
the orbiter," Gerstenmaier said after Monday's launch. Nonetheless,
engineers plan to pore over the data and video gathered during the launch to be
sure.
Atlantis is
bound for the International
Space Station to deliver two massive carriers filled with spare equipment
for the orbiting laboratory. The astronauts plan to spend about 11 days in
space, with three challenging spacewalks and complex robotic work scheduled.
The two spacecraft are due to dock Wednesday at about 11:53 a.m. EST (1653
GMT).
The astronauts'
day on Atlantis began at with a wake-up call at 4:28 a.m. EST (0928 GMT).
Mission Control roused the crew with the song "I Can Only Imagine" by
MercyMe, a tune selected for shuttle pilot Barry "Butch" Wilmore by
his wife Deanna to mark his first career spaceflight.
"What
a very pleasant song to wake up to, thank you for playing that," Wilmore
radioed Mission Control. "Thanks to my wife for selecting it."
SPACE.com
is providing complete coverage of Atlantis' STS-129 mission to the
International Space Station with Staff Writer Clara Moskowitz in Washington,
D.C. and Managing Editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for shuttle mission
updates and a link to NASA TV.
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