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Atlantis crew awakened for inspection day BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: September 19, 2006 The Atlantis astronauts were awakened late Tuesday by a recording of U2's "Beautiful Day" beamed up from mission control in Houston. Flight controllers promptly informed the astronauts they would be carrying out an inspection to look for signs of possible damage after two unidentified objects were spotted floating away from Atlantis earlier in the day.
European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel in mission control then radioed up the "big picture" for today's activity, telling the crew engineers still don't know the identity of debris seen below the shuttle early today and a second object seen separating from the spacecraft shortly after noon. "So far, we do not know the identity of the two things which floated away yesterday," he said. "Today, though, we want you to survey the vehicle to make sure it's ready for entry. Last night, we already surveyed it from the ground. When you look at today's timeline, you'll see we have a shuttle survey in the morning and only as a contingency, the OBSS survey in the afternoon." The OBSS is the orbiter boom sensor system, a 50-foot-long extension that can be picked up by the shuttle's robot arm to provide laser scans and high-resolution views of virtually the entire space shuttle. "We expect that the resolution of the RMS (robot arm camera) survey will be high enough so that the OBSS survey in the afternoon is not needed," Schlegel said. "However, if that's not the case, or if some findings direct us, then and only then we need you to execute the OBSS survey in the afternoon. How copy?" "OK, Hans, thanks a lot, that was pretty clear and we'll put that in work," Piper said. The first object in question was seen flying below the shuttle shortly after pre-landing tests of the shuttle's re-entry systems. Engineers speculate that whatever it might be got shaken off during the tests, which generate a fair amount of vibration. One possible candidate is a plastic shim spotted earlier in the flight extending up from between two tiles on the shuttle's belly. Schlegel asked commander Brent Jett to provide an additional description of a second object seen floating away from Atlantis shortly after noon. Jett photographed the object, but it wasn't clear what it might have been or where it came from. Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale said earlier it reminded him of a plastic bag. "If it's possible, would you please give us a more detailed description of the object you saw floating away," Schlegel said. "We were thinking of speed, direction, shape, appearance and how long could you see it?" "It was shiny, Dan (Burbank) when he first saw it thought it looked like a staple," Jett said. "It was actually a little bigger than that, it looked like a clip, some kind of a metal clip, something like you might, uh, if you were home hanging up a picture, maybe, you know, like one of those picture-hanging clips, although it obviously wasn't that. "In terms of speed and direction, if you were sitting in the commander's seat it was moving away from the vehicle from the 10 o'clock position, relatively level, although it did track a little bit toward the nose as it was moving away so there was a little bit of left to right. ... It's really tough to estimate the velocity. It was moving away pretty quickly, I only was able to get six pictures, and I was shooting fairly quickly, before I could no longer track it. So I was estimating one to two feet per second, perhaps, in velocity." The robot arm inspection is scheduled to begin around 11:45 p.m.
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VIDEO:
MID-DAY BRIEFING BY SHUTTLE CHIEF 