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NASA Determined To Fix Shuttle Foam Debris Problem

28 July 2005

Discovery crew flies "picture perfect" docking with space station

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – As the crew of the space shuttle Discovery completed a flawless docking July 28 with the International Space Station, NASA imagery experts and engineers were working to make sure Discovery can return safely to the Kennedy Space Center August 7, and that the shuttle will continue to fly.

A large piece of insulation foam flew off Discovery’s external fuel tank during the July 26 launch. The foam – 61-84 centimeters long, 25-33 centimeters wide and 6-20 centimeters thick – was seen by high-resolution cameras added to the shuttle after the loss of Columbia in 2003.

The Columbia accident was caused by foam from the external tank hitting the orbiter during launch.

There was no indication the falling chunk of foam damaged Discovery, but the shuttle is undergoing close inspection to check for damage to the orbiter.

"As with any unexpected occurrence, we will closely and thoroughly evaluate this event and make any needed modifications to the shuttle before we launch again," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said July 28 in a statement.

"This is a test flight,” he added. “Among the things we are testing are the integrity of the foam insulation and the performance of new camera equipment installed to detect problems. The cameras worked well. The foam did not.”

The morning of July 28, more than 350 kilometers above the Earth, the seven Discovery astronauts ended their two-day chase of the International Space Station when the 100-ton space shuttle approached the 200-ton orbital outpost.

Discovery is the first shuttle mission to visit the space station since space shuttle Endeavor (STS-113) left in December 2002.

Before docking, Commander Eileen Collins and pilot Jim Kelly guided Discovery through a back-flip, called a rendezvous pitch maneuver, 600 feet below the station, allowing the Expedition 11 station crew – Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and astronaut John Phillips – to photograph Discovery's heat shield.

“The crew had a lot of time on the station to snap pictures of the bottom of the orbiter,” said STS-114 lead flight director Paul Hill during a July 28 press briefing from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“We took pictures all the way around because the orbiter was there and we could do it and it would give us just really great resolution and photo documentation,” he said. “But the ones we’re primarily interested in are on the bottom of the vehicle and on the very top.”

On July 27, Discovery crew members spent seven hours using cameras and a special boom on the robot arm to inspect the shuttle's wings, nose cap and crew cabin. They also used hand-held cameras to inspect tiles on the Orbital Maneuvering System pods.

The images from the station were downlinked and added to imagery and data obtained during Discovery’s launch and the July 27 robotic surveys that engineers are analyzing.

Imagery that NASA released July 27 showed a piece of foam being shed from the external tank during Discovery’s ascent. Other photos showed smaller tile and foam dents that are being reviewed.

The crew also downlinked video taken of the external tank as it fell away from Discovery July 26 and video of the clearance between the Orbiter Boom Sensor System and an antenna.

A team of about 200 engineers across the country is working to analyze the images. They will decide by July 29 if they would like more focused inspections of specific areas on the shuttle.

“We’ll make final preparations for the first spacewalk on Saturday [July 30],” Hill said. “Overall, we’re now set to get on with the mission that the station’s been waiting to see for two and a half years.”

John Shannon, flight operations and integration manager for the space shuttle program, said the team had two objectives for the shuttle flight: to understand the health of Discovery and verify that it is safe to re-enter the atmosphere, and to assess the performance of the external tank.

Of the four areas of interest on the external tank, the most critical, he said, is the protuberance air load (PAL) ramp, which prevents unsteady air flow under tank cable trays and pressurization lines. The foam was shed from this area.

“No decisions have been made either way,” he said. “As we go through the analysis of what happened on the external tank on this mission, that will flow into future decisions.”

The shuttle, Shannon added, “is an amazing vehicle. It can do things in space that no other asset that anyone has can do ... yet we’ve had a problem.

“We flew this flight with assets and a test plan that would identify if we had any problems, and we have found a significant one,” he said. “No one is folding their tents, no one is down in the mouth. We have data and all I see from the team is extreme determination to go and fix that problem.”

Discovery’s seven crew members are being updated with the latest ground team analysis of the foam loss and are continuing to take part in the inspection process.

Information on the shuttle program is available on the NASA Web site.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)