Astronauts aboard NASA's shuttle
Endeavour will survey their spacecraft's heat shield for dings or other damage
today as they prepare for a Sunday arrival at the International Space Station
(ISS).
Led by commander
Chris Ferguson, the seven-person
crew will deploy a sensor-tipped extension of the shuttle's 50-foot
(15-meter) robotic arm to conduct the safety inspection following Endeavour's
launch late Friday.
"I'll be doing a good chunk of the
shuttle arm work," Endeavour pilot Eric Boe said
before the flight.
Boe and mission specialists Shane
Kimbrough and Don Pettit will conduct the scan of Endeavour's wing edges and
nose cap to search for signs of dents and divots caused by foam or other debris
during their Friday launch.
The inspection is expected to begin
at about 2:15 p.m. EST (1915 GMT) and run several hours. Mission Control
reported spotting two debris events during Endeavour's liftoff, one at the
33-second mark and the other just over two minutes into the flight. But the
debris in both instances appeared to be trailing behind the orbiter and not hit
the orbiter, mission controllers told Endeavour's crew.
Orbital inspections of a shuttle's
heat shield have been routine since the 2003 loss of shuttle
Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew. A suitcase-sized piece of fuel
tank foam insulation struck the orbiter's left wing leading edge during
liftoff, punching a hole in the spacecraft's fragile heat shield and leading to
the loss of the shuttle and its crew during re-entry.
Shuttle astronauts now use a suite
of laser sensors and cameras at the end of an orbiter's
50-foot (15-meter) inspection boom, which double's the reach of its robotic arm
to provide close-ups of the heat-resistant carbon composite tiles and panels
along the sensitive wing edges and nose cap.
"Once all the data gets to the
ground, our team of debris and imagery experts will review the data," said Mike
Sarafin, Endeavour's lead STS-126 shuttle flight
director before launch. "In about 24 hours or so, they'll provide a status
report to the mission management team."
Astronauts aboard the space station
will also perform a photographic survey of Endeavour's belly-mounted heat tiles
prior to the spacecraft's scheduled docking at 5:13 p.m. EST (2213 GMT) on
Sunday.
A final inspection is scheduled near
the end of shuttle mission to give engineers another chance to scrutinize the
hull for any signs of damage from orbital debris or micrometeorites.
Endeavour's STS-126 mission is
targeted to prepare the space station for double-sized,
six-person crews. That means a full schedule of four spacewalks for Endeavour's
astronauts, who have brought up a cargo module loaded with more than seven tons
of equipment and supplies to start revamping ISS.
"We're taking a three-bedroom,
one-bathroom house and turning it into a five-bedroom, two-bathroom house with
a gym," said Ferguson in a preflight interview.
The planned 15-day mission will keep
the Endeavour crew in space during Thanksgiving and the orbital laboratory's
10th anniversary on Nov. 20.
NASA is providing live coverage of
Endeavour's mission on NASA TV. Click
here for SPACE.com's mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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