NASA Tests Repair Options

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA conducted a swift series of tests on the ground Monday to determine whether spacewalking astronauts need to fix a deep gouge in Endeavour’s belly for re-entry and assembled a special team to weigh the three repair options.

The gouge is relatively small – 3 1/2 inches by 2 inches – but part of it penetrates the protective thermal tiles, leaving just a thin layer of coated felt over the space shuttle’s aluminum frame to keep out the more than 2,000-degree heat of re-entry.

Mission managers expect to decide by Wednesday whether astronauts should go out and patch the gouge. The damage is benign enough for Endeavour to fly safely home – it’s more a matter of avoiding extensive post-flight repairs to any possible structural damage, said John Shannon, the chairman of the mission management team.

“This is not a catastrophic loss of orbiter case at all. This is a case where you want to do the prudent thing for the vehicle,” Mr. Shannon told reporters Monday.

NASA has never attempted this type of repair on an orbiting shuttle, and two of the three remedies are untested in space.

Engineers are uncertain whether it was foam insulation that came off Endeavour’s external fuel tank and struck the shuttle at liftoff or whether the debris was ice or a combination of materials, Mr. Shannon said.

Despite extensive redesigning of the shuttle fuel tank that has cost NASA a few hundred-million dollars, foam has repeatedly fallen off the tank during launch.

Depending on how NASA addresses the latest problem, space shuttle flights could possibly come to a temporary halt, stalling construction at the international space station once more. Foam problems have caused two lengthy hold-downs.

To patch the gouge, spacewalking astronauts would have to perch on the end of the shuttle’s 100-foot robotic arm and extension boom, be maneuvered under the spacecraft, and either apply black paint, screw on a protective plate or squirt in goo.

The damage occurred a minute after liftoff last week when a baseball-size piece of debris broke off a bracket on the external fuel tank, bounced off a strut farther down on the tank, then slammed into Endeavour’s belly. It’s possible part of the strut broke off when the debris hit it, and that’s what might have shot into Endeavour, Mr. Shannon said.

Originally published by Associated Press.

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