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More debris seen, but no heat shield damage BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: September 20, 2006 Despite spotting more debris floating near the shuttle Atlantis, astronauts conducting a detailed heat shield inspection have not seen any signs of damage that would prevent a day-late landing Thursday. NASA's Mission Management Team will meet later this morning to discuss the results of the inspection and whether to press ahead with re-entry preparations. At a mission status briefing, entry flight director Steve Stich said Atlantis' heat shield appears to be in good condition. "We did two different sets of inspections," Stich said. "The first one was using the shuttle's remote manipulator system (robot arm), we looked at both wing leading edges, we looked at the nose cap and we looked at the under surface of the shuttle. We didn't see any evidence of any kind of damage." A second inspection was carried out using a 50-foot sensor boom attached to the end of the robot arm to examine areas that were not clearly seen with the robot arm's camera. "I didn't see anything particularly anomalous from what we've done so far," said lead flight director Paul Dye. "I expect the crew is going to be finished and ready for Steve to bring them in tomorrow." The inspections were ordered Tuesday after flight controllers spotted presumed debris from the shuttle moving along the same orbital track below the spacecraft. A second object was spotted later in the day, along with numerous small pieces of debris floating near the shuttle. Earlier today, the astronauts spotted three more bits of debris, described as "two rings and a piece of foil." Stich and Dye said it was not unusual for small items inadvertently left in the shuttle's cargo bay during maintenance to work free and float away during a mission. While such "foreign object debris," or FOD, is typically seen early in flight, Stich said Atlantis, which is making its first flight since 2002, could be expected to be carrying a bit more debris than usual. "It's not uncommon to see little bits of pieces of things floating out," Dye said. "it's amazing how something in bright sunlight can look much bigger than it really is. So it's very hard to identify what those little things might be. it's not a particularly uncommon thing when you're concentrating cameras in sunlight ... to see small objects floating out." During the heat shield inspection earlier today, engineers were not surprised to discover a protruding tile spacer and a plastic shim, both seen earlier in the mission sticking up from between adjacent tiles on two external tank propellant feedline doors in the belly of the shuttle, had worked their way free and were no longer visible. Engineers speculated Tuesday that the plastic shim might have shaken loose during hydraulic system tests early Tuesday and floated away, becoming the first of the two mystery objects spotted by the crew and flight controllers. That remains a possibility, although it's not clear if NASA will ever have definitive proof. "The shuttle is continuing to perform beautifully in terms of the systems," Stich said. "The plan for today is, we'll go complete the inspections on the exterior of the vehicle. If we don't see anything anomalous, the Mission Management Team will meet today and I fully expect ... we'll deorbit and land tomorrow." He said forecasters are predicting ideal weather, with light winds and only a few scattered clouds at the Kennedy Space Center. The shuttle has two landing opportunities on successive orbits around 6:21 a.m. and 7:57 a.m.
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VIDEO:
MID-DAY BRIEFING BY SHUTTLE CHIEF 