Astronauts Will Try to Fix Damage to Shuttle

Jun 12, 05:00 AM

Current Headlines: By Traci Watson

The crew of space shuttle Atlantis will attempt an unprecedented repair of the rear of their spacecraft in orbit as early as Friday because of damage during liftoff to the critical heat shield there, NASA managers decided Monday.

During Atlantis' launch last week, aerodynamic forces blew back a 4-inch-by-6-inch corner of a heat-shielding blanket, said John Shannon, deputy shuttle program manager. The blanket protects an engine casing to the left of the shuttle's tail from temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees as the shuttle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

The Atlantis astronauts spotted the detached corner Saturday during a standard day-long inspection of their ship, using lasers and cameras.

If the blanket isn't refastened, heat could eat away the silicon sheets that make up the engine casing itself, Shannon said. Engineers don't know whether the casing could erode enough to pose a safety hazard to the crew.

"The better part of valor was to ... secure it and not worry about it anymore," Shannon said.

In 2003, debris punched a hole in shuttle Columbia's heat shield during launch. The damage wasn't detected during the flight, leading to the craft's disintegration during re-entry and the death of the seven crewmembers.

The accident spurred sweeping changes in the shuttle program, including mandatory inspections of the spacecraft while it's in orbit. Heat-shield blankets have ripped away from the shuttle on at least four missions, but never before has NASA tried to mend one in flight.

Only once has a spacewalker fixed the shuttle's heat shield. In 2005, on the first flight after the Columbia accident, astronaut Stephen Robinson rode the shuttle's robotic arm to the vehicle's belly and plucked out a piece of filler material protruding from the heat shield.

Shannon said an astronaut riding on the shuttle's robotic arm could probably fix the blanket in 90 minutes.

The task could be added to a spacewalk already planned for Friday or made the centerpiece of an unplanned spacewalk that would be conducted Sunday.

The astronaut would probably tuck the blanket back down, then stitch or pin it to the adjacent blankets to make sure it doesn't fly up again, Shannon said.

Engineers are analyzing whether the shuttle's robotic arm could withstand the forces of such an operation, he said.

Tucking in the blanket "looks like it's going to be pretty easy to do, so it's a pretty easy decision," Shannon said.

Atlantis astronauts made their first spacewalk Monday, to add a new $367 million girder to the International Space Station.

The girder is crucial for making the "international" in the station's name accurate. Rooms in the station currently belong to the United States or Russia. After the girder and the huge solar panels it carries are in place, the station will make enough power for European and Japanese rooms to be added.

Atlantis crewmembers James Reilly and John "Danny" Olivas breezed so quickly through their to-do list that they were an hour ahead of schedule. They unpacked boxes holding the new solar panels, connected power and data cables for the new girder and removed locks.

The men did not encounter the jammed bolts that plagued a September mission. Spacewalks are physically and mentally taxing, but things were going so smoothly that one of the few remarks either man made was Reilly saying, "That was easy," after finishing one chore.

But Reilly did not object when, near the end of his 6-hour excursion, one of his crewmates suggested he and Olivas skip some extra tasks.

"Sounds like a great plan. I can get a cup of coffee," he said with a heavy sigh. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.