Discovery crew gives wings an extra-close damage check

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Discovery's astronauts used lasers and digital cameras yesterday to examine the shuttle's wings for any signs of launch damage as they headed toward a docking this morning with the International Space Station.

by By Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, Inquirer

Published Oct. 25, 2007, 3:01 a.m. ET

Discovery's fuel tank did not appear to lose any significant amount of foam insulation during the first two minutes of flight, said John Shannon, head of the mission management team.

"Overall, the tank performed extremely well," he said. But more data and analyses are needed before NASA can say with certainty that the shuttle's thermal shielding made it through the launch damage-free.

The inspection carried out yesterday is standard procedure, but it's an even higher priority on this flight because of questions about possible flaws in three Discovery wing panels.

Shannon said that a preliminary look at the images revealed nothing of significance but that it would take a few more days before experts finished analyzing everything.

Commander Pamela Melroy and her crew used a 100-foot boom to survey Discovery's wings and nose, which are exposed to temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees during reentry. The inspection took a little longer than usual because NASA wanted to collect more detailed pictures of the wings.

Before Tuesday's launch, a NASA safety group recommended that the flight be delayed because there may be some cracking beneath the coating on the three panels. But senior managers decided to proceed.

NASA wants to make sure that none of the protective coating has chipped away and that nothing else is wrong with the reinforced-carbon panels, before bringing Discovery home.

The three space station residents also will snap hundreds of digital pictures of Discovery as the shuttle makes its final approach for today's docking. The shuttle will do a slow-motion backflip, exposing its belly.

About six pieces of foam broke off Discovery's external fuel tank during launch, and one or more may have even hit the shuttle, but NASA says that happened late enough to be of little or no concern. Shannon said nothing appeared to come off the tank's brackets, which were modified after a small piece of bracket foam came loose and gouged Endeavour in August.

China Launches Lunar Probe

China sent a satellite rocketing toward lunar orbit yesterday, the latest step in an ambitious national program to put more astronauts in space, build a space station, and eventually land Chinese astronauts on the moon.

The satellite, called Chang'e after a goddess who flew to the moon in Chinese legend, was launched atop a Long March 3A rocket that lifted off at 6:05 p.m. local time (6:05 a.m. in Philadelphia) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province in central China. The China National Space Administration said Chang'e was due to enter a lunar orbit Nov. 5 and send back images and analyses of the moon's surface for about a year.

The trouble-free liftoff was heralded by commentators and broadcast live on government TV.

Jiao Weixin, a professor

at Peking University's School of Earth and Space Sciences, noted that China, which first shot a man into space in 2003, still lagged far behind the United States and Russia in space exploration. But he described yesterday's launch as a milestone for China's efforts, signifying that Chinese engineers have the know-how to probe

the moon.

- Washington Post

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