Shuttle Looks Clean in Initial Check

Shuttle hull will be fully examined when it docks with the space station.

ByABC News
June 1, 2008, 9:45 PM

HOUSTON, June 1, 2008— -- Discovery is catching up with the International Space Station on its mission to install the billion dollar Japanese Kibo module -- and yes, bring parts to fix the toilet on the space station.

Astronaut Karen Nyberg and shuttle Pilot Ken Ham used Discovery's robotic arm to inspect what they could of the shuttle, looking for damage. They are missing half the system used to examine the shuttles surface because it just couldn't fit into the cargo bay along with the massive Kibo module.

NASA manager LeRoy Cain says analysis shows five pieces of foam came off the tank, and two pieces hit the shuttle during launch, but initial images and data from Discovery indicate the impacts were not serious.

But Cain admits they don't have the whole picture yet.

"So those areas of foam that we saw coming off, those five or so pieces, at least some of them are coming from an area that we can't see yet or are not evidenced in the handheld or the umbilical well imagery that we've seen," he said. "So possibly [the pieces came] from areas that we're just not able to see because of the rotation of the tank and the lighting."

The mission management team is waiting for more information from the rendezvous pitch maneuver, when Commander Mark Kelly puts Discovery into a backflip 600 feet below the space station just before docking.

The nine-minute maneuver gives the crew on the space station 90 seconds to shoot as many as 300 digital photos of the shuttle's belly, looking for evidence of any damage caused by the launch.

There will be the usual greetings when the hatch opens between Discovery and the space station, but the three astronauts on the space station are waiting most anxiously for the plumbing parts that were rushed to the Kennedy Space Center last week and loaded onto the shuttle.

Discovery is carrying up a new pump for the space station's broken toilet. There is only one bathroom on the space station, in the Russian segment, and it has gone through three pumps in the past 1 1/2 weeks.