Crew uses boom to check shuttle's skin
Endeavour's astronauts inspected their ship's thermal skin Friday for any damage from orbital debris, using a laser-tipped boom that will be left behind at the international space station. The slow and meticulous survey normally is conducted after a space shuttle leaves the space station. This time, it was done with the shuttle still docked. That's because the 50-foot inspection boom will be left behind for the next shuttle crew. Meanwhile, NASA may be forced to delay some of the year's later shuttle flights, including the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission at the end of August, because of a slowdown in building external fuel tanks with post-Columbia design changes. Shuttle officials are evaluating the schedule and what can be done to keep the launches on track. There won't be room in Discovery's payload bay for an inspection boom in May; Japan's enormous Kibo lab will take up almost every square inch. Two astronauts will attach the boom to the outside of the space station Saturday night during the fifth and final spacewalk of the mission. Shortly after reaching orbit last week, the astronauts hooked up the boom to Endeavour's 50-foot robot arm to check the wings and nose for any launch damage. None was found. They repeated the inspection Friday in the remote chance that the wings or nose was hit by a micrometeorite or space junk during the past 1 |
