Houston – Early inspections have revealed no damage to the space shuttle Discovery, NASA said Wednesday after a day of checking out the spacecraft with onboard cameras.
That means that when the shuttle meets up with the international space station this morning, it likely won’t need emergency repairs while hooked up with the orbital outpost – unlike last year’s daring spacewalk fixes.
Discovery’s delicate heat shield and everything else appear at first glance to be in near- perfect shape, NASA officials said, although it’s still very early in the analysis.
Engineers are nowhere near finished poring over 70 minutes of video that astronauts shot using an extended boom armed with a laser and cameras to inspect Discovery’s delicate reinforced carbon wing and nose cone.
In 2003, a piece of foam insulation from the shuttle’s external tank knocked a hole in a wing during launch, causing Columbia to disintegrate as it returned home for a landing.
And last year, film captured damage during the first space flight after Columbia, requiring a special emergency repair spacewalk.
Engineers will painstakingly go over Wednesday’s images – and others shot by cameras during Tuesday’s launch – and report any possible losses of foam or damage points on the shuttle.
Launch photos show only five minor cases of debris shedding, all occurring after the shuttle was at such a high altitude there was little air pressure and no force to cause damage, shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said Tuesday.
