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Gash in Shuttle Might Not Need Repairs, NASA Says

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 06:17 CDT

By Traci Watson

Preliminary new data make NASA managers "cautiously optimistic" that a deep gash in space shuttle Endeavour's heat shield will not need to be repaired, deputy shuttle program manager John Shannon said Tuesday.

A computer analysis showed that in spite of the gash, the shuttle's aluminum skin would stay 25 degrees below NASA's risk limit of 350 degrees during the shuttle's dive through the Earth's atmosphere, Shannon said. He cautioned that the analysis is preliminary and must be confirmed by running damaged tile through a furnace.

Shannon said Monday that the damage poses no threat to the crew but could result in structural damage to the spacecraft.

Managers will decide late today whether to send astronauts on an unplanned spacewalk to repair the gouge, which penetrates through the inch-thick tile on the shuttle's belly to reveal the pad that lies directly atop the aluminum skin.

If NASA fixes the gouge, astronauts would dab on a black primer and fill the cavity with caulk-like material that would harden.

Shannon said he has no "big concerns" about a repair spacewalk, but spacewalks are so inherently risky that he would order a fix only if it would prevent major rehabilitation to Endeavour on Earth. A spacewalk "is the most hazardous operation we do on orbit," Shannon said. "It's not something you take lightly."

The news about the damage came on a day that teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan spoke to kids from orbit, which NASA hopes she'll do three times this mission. Morgan was the backup to Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died in the Challenger explosion in 1986.

Morgan and three other astronauts took questions from children in Idaho, where Morgan lived and taught for more than 20 years. This is her first space mission. "We're happy to be here with you," Morgan said. "Welcome aboard."

The astronauts made no mention of the event preoccupying shuttle managers on Earth. During the shuttle's Aug. 8 liftoff, a piece of debris peeled off the vehicle's fuel tank and bounced off a strut. A fragment roughly the size of a portable CD player slammed into Endeavour's belly at nearly 150 mph.

In 2003, debris from the fuel tank punched a hole in the heat shield of shuttle Columbia. The spacecraft broke apart during re-entry, killing the crew.

The caulk that a spacewalking astronaut would apply to the hole has never been tested in orbit. To get to the gash, the astronauts performing the repairs would have to ride a 100-foot-long version of the shuttle's robotic arm, steered by an astronaut inside Endeavour.

"Anytime you've got someone on the end of the arm, it's a tricky thing," Endeavour astronaut Tracy Caldwell, an expert on the robotic arm, said Tuesday.

If a repair is called for, either Caldwell or Morgan would probably steer the robotic arm.

Morgan spent the morning directing the shuttle's arm to pluck a giant storage shelf from Endeavour's cargo bay and hand it to the station's robotic arm.

Morgan slid easily from astronaut to teacher duties Tuesday, serving as the emcee to the session with students and answering questions herself. When a student asked how astronauts exercise in space, she lifted crewmate Alvin Drew with one hand and crewmate Dafydd Williams with the other -- an easy task in zero gravity.

The flight is "definitely worth" the 21-year wait she has endured since Challenger, Morgan said during TV interviews that were broadcast live. She said she didn't think about Challenger's explosion 73 seconds after liftoff when Endeavour launched last week.

She has thought of McAuliffe and the other Challenger astronauts "just about every day since 20-odd years ago," she said, but her thought as Endeavour soared off the launch pad was "Hang on, 'cause here we go." (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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