Shuttle wings checked; nothing alarming so far

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Discovery's astronauts used lasers and digital cameras Wednesday to examine the shuttle's wings for any signs of launch damage as they gained on the international space station with each circling of the Earth.

The good news was that Discovery's fuel tank did not appear to lose any significant amount of foam insulation during the crucial first two minutes of flight, said John Shannon, head of the mission management team.

More data and analyses are needed, however, before NASA can say with absolute certainty that the shuttle's thermal shielding made it through the launch damage-free.

The inspection carried out Wednesday is standard procedure, but it's an even higher priority this time because of questions about possible flaws in three wing panels.

Shannon said a preliminary look at the images revealed nothing of significance, but itwill take another few days before experts on the ground finish analyzing everything.

Commander Pamela Melroy and her crew used a 100-foot boom to survey Discovery's wings and nose, which are exposed to as much as 3,000 degrees during re-entry.

The inspection took a little longer than usual because NASA wanted to collect more detailed pictures of the wings, in particular the three suspect panels.

Before Tuesday's launch, a NASA safety group recommended that the flight be delayed because there may be some cracking beneath the coating on these three panels.

But senior managers decided to proceed, saying it was an acceptable risk.

NASA wants to make sure none of the protective coating was chipped away and nothing else is wrong with the reinforced-carbon panels, before bringing Discovery home.

Columbia was destroyed 1 during re-entry 4/2 years ago because of a hole in the left wing, left there by flyaway fuel-tank foam.

Just as important will be the hundreds of digital pictures snapped by the three space station residents as Discovery makes its final approach for this morning's docking.

The shuttle will do a slowmotion back flip, exposing its belly.

About six pieces of foam broke off Discovery's external fuel tank during launch, and one or more may have even hit the shuttle, but it happened late enough to be of little or no concern. Shannon said nothing appeared to come off the tank's brackets, which were modified after a small piece of bracket foam came loose and gouged Endeavour's belly in August.

Discovery is delivering a new room for the space station that's about the size of a school bus. It's the first live-in addition since 2001.

The pressurized compartment, called Harmony, will serve as the docking port forEurope and Japan's laboratories, which will be launched on the next three shuttle flights.

China, meanwhile, sent a satellite rocketing toward lunar orbit Wednesday evening, the latest step in an ambitious national program to shoot more astronauts into space, build a space station and eventually land Chinese astronauts on the moon.

The satellite, called Chang'e after a goddess who flew to the moon in Chinese legend, was lifted into space atop a whitepainted Long March 3A rocket that blasted off at 6:05 p.m. Beijing time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province in central China. The China National Space Administration said Chang'e was scheduled to enter a lunar orbit Nov. 5 and send back images andanalyses of the moon's surface for about a year.

Information for this article was contributed by Marcia Dunn of The Associated Press and Edward Cody, Li Jie and Xu Tianxing of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/25/2007

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