Looking For Debris Hits, Missing Heat Tiles

Now that the space shuttle Discovery is safely in orbit, astronauts will spend much of their day determining whether it can safely return to Earth.

The Discovery crew will conduct a virtual walk-around, taking pictures and using sensors on the tip of the Canadian-made robotic arm.

There is some cause for concern. Using cameras on the orbiter, its fuel tank, on the ground and aboard chase planes, NASA officials caught a glimpse of a small piece of debris falling between the shuttle and its external fuel tank. Early speculation was that it was a piece of thermal tile from the nose gear door. The exact nature of the debris and the damage it might have caused are still to be determined.

"We did not come into this flight expecting to eliminate" all debris sources, said NASA Flight Operations Manager John Shannon, quoted by CNN. "But we knew that we had the tools available to us to characterize it." Shannon spoke during a Tuesday evening briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Aside from mild concern about debris -- a concern obviously spawned by the 2003 Columbia disaster in which debris from the external fuel tank breeched the left wing and caused the shuttle to disintegrate upon re-entry -- NASA workers were elated that the orbiter had finally returned to flight.

"The mood was just giddy," shuttle launch director Michael Leinbach told reporters. He, too, was quoted by CNN. "People were slapping each other on the back."

It was a cathartic moment, said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

"Take note of what you saw here," he said. "The power and the majesty of the launch, of course, but also the competence and the professionalism, the sheer gall, the pluckiness, the grittiness of this team that pulled this program out of the depths of despair."

But never did Columbia stray far from the minds of shuttle commander Eileen Collins and her crew.

"We reflect on the last shuttle mission, the great ship Columbia and her inspiring crew," she said the night before the launch.

FMI: www.nasa.gov