• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Shuttle Crew Conducts Unexpected Inspection, Delays Deliveries to Station

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 December 2006, 06:00 CST

By Traci Watson

The crew of space shuttle Discovery did an unplanned inspection of their ship's heat shield as a precaution Monday after sensors detected a possible glancing blow to the left wing earlier in the day.

The inspection delayed by half an hour one of Discovery's major deliveries to the International Space Station: the handover of a girder from the shuttle's robotic arm to the station's robotic arm. The 2-ton girder will be attached to the orbiting laboratory's framework today during a six-hour spacewalk.

NASA officials decided it was worthwhile to postpone the girder's delivery to assure themselves that Discovery had not taken a serious hit. Sensors in the front of the wing recorded a ding at 5:30 a.m. ET Monday while the crew slept.

The ding could have been caused by a speck of space junk or orbiting rock hitting the wing. Or the sensors could have picked up a vibration caused by pieces of Discovery's cargo shifting as it adjusted to the chilly temperatures in orbit, said deputy shuttle manager John Shannon.

By 9 p.m. ET, engineers had gotten a quick look at the pictures from the additional inspection. "I don't think anybody saw anything there," Shannon said.

The spot that may have been hit was on the front edge of the wing, which experiences temperatures of 3,000 degrees when the shuttle re-enters the atmosphere. An undetected hole in almost exactly the same spot led to the disintegration of shuttle Columbia in 2003, which killed the crew of seven.

Since the accident, NASA has been scrupulous about checking the shuttle's heat shield before the vehicle returns to Earth. The crew completed a standard inspection of the heat shield on the wings Sunday and found no problems. The sensors recorded the ding later.

Four hours before the additional inspection, the shuttle had docked with the International Space Station. That allowed Discovery astronauts Joan Higginbotham and Sunita Williams to use a camera on the station's robotic arm to study the area for five minutes.

After the inspection, astronaut Nick Patrick carefully hoisted the $11 million girder out of the shuttle's cargo bay -- a tight squeeze, he said before launching -- and handed it to the station's robotic arm.

Known officially as the P5 truss, the girder is nicknamed "Puny" because even though it's wide, it's much shorter than many of the other girders on the station. Its main job is to support power and data cables and coolant pipes.

Today, the crew will use the station's robotic arm to position the girder in place. The astronauts steering the station's arm won't have good views of what it is doing. They will rely on directions from two spacewalking colleagues to maneuver the 60-foot arm without hitting anything. Then the spacewalkers will bolt the girder onto the station's framework.

In addition to the girder, Discovery made another key delivery: Astronaut Williams, 41, who will live on the station for the next six months. She is the first female station resident since late 2002.

Williams and the other six members of the Discovery crew floated into the station from the shuttle at 6:54 p.m. ET and were greeted with hugs and camera flashes by the three-man station crew.

Station resident Thomas Reiter waved a small Swedish flag in honor of Discovery astronaut Christer Fuglesang, the first Swede in space.

A few hours before the shuttle crew entered the station, the station crew took photos of Discovery as it approached. The pictures showed flaking of the white heat-shield tiles on the shuttle's belly.

Shannon said engineers will decide overnight whether to do an extra inspection of the area. He said that there was a "good chance" that none would be needed. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

More News in this Category