Engineers Count More Than 100 Dings On Orbiter -- That's About Average

As the STS-114 astronauts were getting a big "welcome home!" at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, engineers in the Mojave Desert were counting the dents and dings on Discovery. It's not that there were any more than usual -- 101, 20 of which measured more than an inch in either length or diameter -- it's just that, in the wake of the Columbia tragedy, everybody's counting.

Still, efforts to reduce the amount of launch-related debris didn't necessarily reduce the number of visible impact sites on the orbiter.

"It's as clean a vehicle as I've seen after landing," Dean Schaaf, landing support convoy commander, told the Associated Press.

"In the last two-and-a-half years, we have been through the very worst that manned space flight can bring us, and, over the past two weeks, we have seen the very best," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told the astronauts and their families, along with about 700 others who turned out to welcome the crew home to Houston Wednesday.

What's next for the space program? The shuttles are again grounded, this time because of renewed concern over foam falling from the orbiter's external fuel tank.

The engineering teams already have begun work to understand the causes behind the foam loss, which was identified in imagery taken during Discovery's launch July 26," NASA officials said in a statement quoted by South Africa's SA news service.

Griffin said after the shuttle landed at Edwards AFB, CA, he hoped the shuttles would be back in space by the end of the year -- but refused to guarantee it.

FMI: www.nasa.gov