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Tile damage spotted on shuttle's underbelly |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Friday, 10 August 2007
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 NASA discovered a worrisome gouge on Endeavour’s belly soon after the shuttle docked with the international space station Friday, possibly caused by ice that broke off the fuel tank a minute after liftoff.
The gouge — about 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) square — was spotted in zoom-in photography taken by the space station crew shortly before Endeavour delivered teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her six crewmates to the orbiting outpost.
“What does this mean? I don’t know at this point,” said John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team. If the gouge is deep enough, the shuttle astronauts may have to patch it during a spacewalk, he said.
On Sunday, the astronauts will inspect the area, using Endeavour’s 100-foot (30-meter) robot arm and extension beam. Lasers on the end of the beam will gauge the exact size and depth of the gouge, Shannon said, and then engineering analyses will determine whether the damage is severe enough to warrant repairs.
A close-up view of tiles behind the landing-gear door on the shuttle's
starboard, or right, side shows white spots that NASA says are gouges.
The most prominent spot is near the left edge of this image.
The gouge — white against the black tiles on the underside of Endeavour — is several feet from the starboard main landing gear door. It appears to be the result of ice, although engineers are not positive; the damage could have been caused by a piece of foam insulation that came off the external fuel tank.
Radar images show a white spray or streak coming off Endeavour 58 seconds after liftoff. Engineers theorize that if the debris was ice, it pierced the tile and then broke up, scraping the area downwind. Pictures from Friday’s photo inspection show several small scrapes downwind of the biggest gouge.
Even though it was an extremely hot day in Florida, the fuel tank was loaded with super-cold fuel, which could have allowed dangerously big chunks of ice to form on its surface.
Shannon said it is uncertain how big the debris was. A 1.67-pound chunk of foam led to Columbia’s catastrophic re-entry in 2003.
Ice is heavier than foam, however, and would cause more damage.
In all, nine pieces of debris, mostly foam, came off the fuel tank during Wednesday evening’s liftoff, and three were believed to have struck the shuttle. Shannon said further analysis could uncover more damage. In response to a question, he acknowledged that in the past shuttles have landed with more serious damage than the gouge seen Friday. However, the Columbia tragedy has sensitized NASA to the threat posed by flying debris.
If managers decide a fix is required, Endeavour's spacewalkers would go out to repair the gouge. In the wake of Columbia's loss, astronauts have been trained to use a newly developed repair kit that includes patches, paint and gap-filling goo.
Mission Control quickly told Endeavour's seven astronauts about the damage.
Commander Scott Kelly was at the controls when Endeavour performed the orbital backflip earlier in the day so the space station crew could photograph the belly and check for any damage.
While still 625 feet (190 meters) out, Kelly steered Endeavour through a complete somersault so the three space station residents could photograph the shuttle’s belly. The 210-mile-high (335-kilometer-high) backflip — which lasted nine minutes and spanned the entire Atlantic — has been standard procedure ever since the Columbia disaster, providing a rare camera view of the shuttle’s often-nicked underside.
Space station astronaut Clay Anderson videotaped the backflip, while his two Russian crewmates snapped furiously away on digital cameras equipped with high-powered zoom lenses. Nearly 300 digital pictures were beamed back to Earth.
Shortly afterward, Kelly guided Endeavour into the space station's docking port as the two spacecraft soared above the South Pacific. The shuttle will remain at the outpost for at least a week.
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