WASHINGTON — Astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis
will inspect their spacecraft's sensitive heat shield today 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 will use 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 is set to begin at 8:13 a.m. EST (1313 GMT) and
will last about six hours. Astronauts will attach the 50-foot (15-meter)
inspection boom to the end of the shuttle's already 50-foot (15-meter) robotic
arm and use 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 astronauts'
day on Atlantis began at began 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."
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