Engineers at the Johnson Space Center are evaluating a small area of tile damage on the forward part of the shuttle Atlantis' right wing where it joins the ship's fuselage. The nicked tiles, apparently damaged during launch by a debris impact around 106 seconds after liftoff, were spotted during a lengthy heat shield inspection by the Atlantis astronauts.

Minor tile damage was seen during heat shield inspections today. Credit: NASA TV

LeRoy Cain, chairman of NASA's Mission Management Team, told reporters late Tuesday engineers are not overly concerned about the damage and probably will not require an additional, "focused" inspection to collect more data. But engineers will continue their assessment overnight to make sure the damage poses no risk to the shuttle.

"This area is about 21 inches long," Cain said, describing a photograph of the damage site. "It looks like something just kind of chattered down along that edge there on the starboard chine area. The preliminary indications are that the damage is not very deep here, it's not very significant. This is not something we're very concerned about. But we want the team to do our normal assessment and evaluation of it, and they'll do that overnight tonight."

But Cain said the preliminary assessment "certainly doesn't look like it's going to be an issue for us. And matter of fact, the teams are saying we probably will not even need a focused inspection in this area. But ... we want to take the time and review the data overnight."

If a focused inspection is required, it would be carried out Friday, before the crew's second Hubble Space Telescope servicing spacewalk gets under way. Lead flight director Tony Ceccacci said a focused inspection, if ordered, would have no major impact on the planned EVA.

At the Kennedy Space Center, meanwhile, engineers are evaluating damage to the flame deflector at launch pad 39A where Atlantis began it's voyage Monday. The flame deflector, positioned directly below the exhaust ports of the shuttle's mobile launch platform, suffered significant erosion of the heat-resistant Fondu Fyre coating used to deflect 5,000-degree flame from the shuttle's solid-fuel boosters.

Engineers found a fair amount of debris littering the pad surface and the immediate area around the "flame trench" during a post-launch inspection, but "this was all debris that was moving around in the area that was below the pad area where the vehicle sits on top," Cain said. "Atlantis was not in danger of being struck by this debris."

The shuttle Endeavour currently is mounted on nearby launch pad 39B where it is on stand-by duty for a possible emergency rescue mission in case the Atlantis astronauts encounter any major problems in orbit that might prevent a safe re-entry. Engineers plan to move Endeavour to pad 39A for launch June 13 on a space station assembly mission after it is released from rescue standby.

Cain said the damage to the flame deflector at pad 39A does not appear to be serious and engineers are confident it can be repaired with no impact on Endeavour's June launch date.

Damage to pad 39A was not the only issue engineers at Kennedy had to deal with. A few hours after pad 39A was blasted by Atlantis' exhaust, two lightning strikes were recorded at pad 39B.

"The weather apparently got a little stirred up last night and there was some lightning and some storms in the area in the vicinity of the cape and the pads," Cain said. "And we did record two lightning strikes at pad B."

Engineers are carrying out an assessment to make sure the strikes caused no problems for the shuttle's complex electrical system.

The heat shield damage on Atlantis' right wing was spotted during an all-day inspection using the shuttle's robot arm and a 50-foot-long instrumented extension boom. Astronaut Dan Burbank in mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told the astronauts the damage did not appear serious, but the assessment was not yet complete.

A piece of debris can be seen video from the external tank video camera about 105 seconds after liftoff. Credit: NASA TV

"Just want to let you know that during the starboard (wing) survey, LDRI survey, in the chine area there is a stretch of about 21 inches, four or five tiles that show some nick damage it looks like," Burbank said. "It probably was debris related. The ascent imagery folks have gone back and looked at the imagery and there was an event at about 104 seconds or so that was in that area that might correspond to what we saw there.

"At this point, the preliminary assessment is it doesn't look very serious, those tiles are pretty thick, the nicks looks to be pretty small," he said. "It's probably too early to say we'd be looking at a focused inspection, but we are at this point discussing possibly having to get back into the ET (external tank) umbilical imagery downlink procedure sometime later here to see if we can get some more information on the debris."

Burbank was referring to a camera in the belly of the shuttle that took photographs of the shuttle's external tank after it was jettisoned following launch Monday. The photos might show where the debris originated, but the astronauts have had problems electronically retrieving the stored pictures.

"OK, that makes sense,It sounds like there may be more value in that than we thought," commander Scott Altman replied. "Let us know, we'll try and work that, although the indications weren't looking very promising."

"Discovery, copy, and we understand as well," Burbank said. "We'll get some pictures and some charts and send them up to you so that you've got all the information we've got. But again, right now everybody's feeling pretty good it's not something particularly serious. We just want to make sure we do the right thing and complete all the analysis."

"Roger that, Houston," Altman said. "We know it takes a while to put the story together. Appreciate that due diligence in working that. We'll try to give you whatever data we can. Hopefully, the HD video and the stills would help with the analysis as well."

"OK, that sounds good," Burbank said. "One other piece of this. Also in the wing leading edge sensor data, that inboard-most sensor in the starboard wing showed evidence of a hit of about 2.9 GRMS at about the 104, 106 second timeframe, too. So all of these seem to latch up pretty cleanly in the preliminary data."

"OK, copy that," Altman said. "We'll stand by for further words."

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