Environmental damage on Earth seen from shuttle

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Commander Eileen Collins said
astronauts on shuttle Discovery had seen widespread
environmental destruction on Earth and warned on Thursday that
greater care was needed to protect natural resources.

Her comments came as NASA pondered whether to send
astronauts out on an extra spacewalk to repair additional
heat-protection damage on the first shuttle mission since the
2003 Columbia disaster.

Discovery is linked with the International Space Station
and orbiting 220 miles above the Earth.

“Sometimes you can see how there is erosion, and you can
see how there is deforestation. It’s very widespread in some
parts of the world,” Collins said in a conversation from space
with Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi.

“We would like to see, from the astronauts’ point of view,
people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources
that have been used,” said Collins, who was standing with
Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi in front of a Japanese flag
and holding a colorful fan.

Collins, flying her fourth shuttle mission, said the view
from space made clear that Earth’s atmosphere must be
protected, too.

“The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg,
it’s so very thin,” she said. “We know that we don’t have much
air, we need to protect what we have.”

While Collins and Noguchi chatted, NASA officials were
deciding whether a torn insulation blanket protecting part of
the shuttle surface could rip off and strike a damaging blow to
Discovery when it re-enters the atmosphere.

They said it could require another spacewalk to fix, which
would take place on Saturday if needed. A decision was expected
on Thursday afternoon.

Noguchi and astronaut Steve Robinson already have done
three spacewalks, including a landmark walk on Wednesday to
remove loose cloth strips protruding from Discovery’s belly.
NASA feared the strips could cause dangerous heat damage when
the shuttle lands on Monday.

COLUMBIA TRIBUTE

The combined crew of Discovery and the space station, nine
in all, paid tribute on Thursday to the Columbia crew and other
astronauts who have died in space accidents. They took turns
speaking while television shots from the shuttle showed it
passing over a sunlit Earth, then into night.

“Tragically, two years ago, we came to realize we had let
our God down. We became lost in our hubris and learned once
more the terrible price that must be paid for our failures,”
said mission specialist Charles Camarda. “In that accident, we
not only lost seven colleagues, we lost seven friends.”

Columbia broke apart before landing on Feb. 1, 2003, and
the seven astronauts on board died.

Loose insulation foam from the fuel tank struck the wing
heat shield at launch 16 days before, causing a hole that
allowed superheated gases to penetrate and destroy the shuttle
when it descended into the atmosphere.

NASA spent 2 1/2 years and $1 billion on safety upgrades
after Columbia, but videos showed loose tank foam at
Discovery’s launch last week. The agency suspended shuttle
flights until the foam problem is fixed.

A report in The New York Times suggested NASA was not as
careful as it could have been about the foam issue.

The Times said an internal NASA memo, written in December
by a retired NASA engineer brought back to monitor the quality
of the foam operation, complained that deficiencies remained in
the way foam was being applied to the fuel tank and warned
“there will continue to be a threat of critical debris
generation.”

A spokesman at Johnson Space Center in Houston told Reuters
he had not yet seen the Times report and could not comment.