Engineers Trying To Tackle Foam Problem

NASA scientists and engineers, still stumped by the falling foam that killed Columbia and threatened Discovery on its Return to Flight, say the next shuttle mission will likely be delayed until November.

Space agency officials had hoped they would be able to launch Atlantis next month. But the delamination of foam from the external fuel tank continues to plague the shuttle program, even after the tank was redesigned.

"We didn't find any root cause" of the foam incident, said William Gerstenmeier, program manager of the International Space Station. "It was probably a combination of events. We just need to keep looking." Gerstenmeier was quoted by the Washington Post.

Gerstenmeier told reporters in a teleconference Thursday that foam has been falling from the external fuel tank during shuttle launches that date back to the very first mission in 1981. But until the Columbia tragedy, no one thought falling foam could cripple -- or kill -- the orbiter, he said.

Since the Columbia tragedy, NASA has spent thousands of man-hours and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to eradicate the problem. In the Return to Flight mission, they thought they had the problem licked... until a 0.9 pound piece of foam fell from the tank during launch. It was the largest chunk of foam to fall off, but Gerstenmeier said there were other incidents of delamination as well.

The initial thought at NASA is that, since the largest piece of foam to come off the tank fell from a spot that had been sprayed by hand, new machinery might be developed to ensure a more even application of the insulating material. But some of the areas that became delaminated were machine-sprayed, leaving NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center back at the drawing board.

"This is a very difficult engineering problem," Gerstenmeier said.

Five teams have now been assigned to find a way to stop falling foam. Gerstenmeier told reporters he hoped to have a solution in the next couple of weeks.

FMI: www.nasa.gov