Shuttle Lifts Off With Lab, Plumbing Supplies

HOUSTON, May 31, 2008— -- Discovery is on its way to the International Space Station, carrying the huge Kibo laboratory module to its new home in orbit -- as well as a toilet to replace the broken one on the space station.

This two-week mission, with three scheduled spacewalks, will bring the space station close to completion, 10 years after construction began on the orbiting outpost.

Engineers are analyzing video of debris that came off the shuttle's external tank, including one piece that hit the bottom of the orbiter.

Bill Gerstermeier, NASA's chief of space flight, said five pieces of foam came off the tank, but he said he doesn't think they pose a threat to the orbiter.

"They were after the aerodynamically sensitive time," he said. "They looked thin, therefore they were lightweight, and they don't appear to be any impact to us at all. We'll review all the video and all the films later and see what happens."

NASA and the shuttle crew won't be able to get a solid evaluation of the damage until Monday, when Discovery docks with the space station.

They will need the 50-foot orbiter boom sensor system, which extends the shuttle's robotic arm, to get good images of the orbiter's belly. But the system was left on the space station during the last shuttle mission because there wasn't going to be room for it in Discovery's payload bay on this trip: the Kibo module is so big it took up the whole bay.

Commander Mark Kelly will put Discovery into a 90-second backflip while thecrew on the space station takes pictures.

The astronauts on Discovery can take a look at some parts of the shuttle on Sunday, using the robotic arm, but without the extention it has a limited reach.

Astronaut Terry Virts, in Mission Control, informed Kelly about the loss of foam from the tank during liftoff.

Foam falling off the shuttle's external tank has long been a problem for the space agency.

A piece of foam punched a hole in the shuttle Columbia's wing in 2003, which caused the spacecraft to disintegrate on re-entry, killing all seven astronauts on board.

NASA has spent millions redesigning the external tank, and the tank that was attached to this shuttle was the result of the redesign that NASA hoped would keep foam from falling off the tank.

Kibo may be the biggest piece of hardware in Discovery's payload bay,but the crew on the space station is probably more eager to get the plumbing parts coming up on the shuttle, since the toilet on the space station isn't working.

The crew tried to repair the toilet using spares on board the space station, but they weren't able to fix the problem. So the crew has been using the toilet in the Soyuz, which is always docked to the space station.

That's not a good long term solution, though, so spare parts were rushed from Russia to the Kennedy Space Center and stashed on Discovery. The shuttle docks on Monday and the astronauts-turned-plumbers will install the new parts on the toilet on Tuesday.

The seven-member crew of Discovery includes two veterans: Kelly and lead spacewalker Mike Fossum. There are five rookies on this flight: pilot Kenneth Ham, flight engineer Ronald Garan, lead robotic arm operator Karen Nyberg, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and space station flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff, who will take Garrett Reisman's place on the space station.

This is the 123rd space shuttle flight. NASA has seven missions planned to finish construction of the $100 billion space station and two resupply flights before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

The next shuttle flight will go to the Hubble space telescope to repair it for the last time before the space shuttle fleet is grounded.