Spacewalk succeeds in making shuttle repairs!

[Dashken]

Astronaut Stephen Robinson has plucked two loose fabric strips from the underside of the shuttle Discovery during a spacewalk on Wednesday in an unprecedented repair to the craft’s heat shield.

”I’m grasping it and I’m pulling it and it’s coming out very easily. Beautiful. Nice,” Robinson radioed as he pulled the material out from between the heat resistant tiles. “It looks like this big patient is cured.”

With Japanese colleague Soichi Noguchi watching from a perch on the International Space Station, to which Discovery is docked on the first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster, Robinson was lowered into position by the station’s 18m robotic arm.

Mission specialists feared that the protruding fabric — just a few centimetres long — could mean the tiles might fail to cope with the intense heat during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. The shuttle Columbia was incinerated during re-entry in 2003 after damage to insulating foam.

Mssrs Robinson and Noguchi began their six-hour spacewalk at about 4am New York time (9am BST) on Wednesday. “I’ll have to be careful but the task is very simple,” Robinson said before the mission.

Possible damage to the craft's heat shield, and news that falling foam from the external engine on lift-off could have created greater problems, have cast a cloud over Nasa's space shuttle programme and US-sponsored manned flight.

Last week Nasa indefinitely suspended all future shuttle flights after falling debris was spotted on videos that recorded the Discovery's joyful launch. Despite assurances by Nasa administrator Mike Griffin that the agency would “fix the problem and fly again”, the space community worries that the US may be facing a drawn-out period without a manned space programme.

“They'll have to make some tough decisions over the next few months about whether to give up on the shuttles,” says Roger Launius, who chairs the division of space history at the Smithsonian, the research and museums institute. “It's not an easy choice.”

Many believe that Nasa has no choice but to try to keep the shuttles running. The US has no other way to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station unless it hires a Russian Soyuz craft. And the Russians say they will start charging for that service next year.

But a new overhaul of the shuttle would boost budgetary pressures on Nasa at a time when the agency can least afford it. This month Nasa will reveal specifications for the next generation of spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). More money for the shuttle could slow down the CEV's development.

As it is, Nasa anticipates a four-year gap in manned space travel. The shuttle is due to be retired in 2010; the first manned mission of the CEV is not scheduled until 2014. The White House has promised to return astronauts to the Moon as early as 2015.

Nasa has already spent more than $1bn (€820m, £565bn) and two-and-a-half years trying to improve shuttle safety, with the focus on falling debris, which doomed the Columbia in 2003. Improved safety procedures acquired greater urgency after concerns were raised about the current flight. Unless the shuttles undergo another sweeping overhaul, the risk of disaster would rise with each launch of the ageing fleet.

Source: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/066d4a38-03...00e2511c8.html