U.S. astronauts Dan Tani and Clay Anderson swapped places aboard Discovery and the International Space Station today, completing a crew rotation considered a key objective of NASA's 120th shuttle mission.
Mission managers, meanwhile, are studying high-resolution photographs of the underside of Discovery to make certain no serious damage was done to fragile but critical heat-shield tiles during the shuttle's launch Tuesday.
A curved piece of ice spotted on Discovery's external tank before liftoff struck the orbiter's liquid hydrogen umbilical door, and engineers are reviewing photos taken during an orbital backflip performed during the shuttle's approach to the outpost.
"They'll be looking pretty close at it," NASA Lead Shuttle Flight Director Rick LaBrode said.
At this time, however, it does not appear that any launch debris caused enough damage to warrant an extra inspection on Saturday.
At least six small pieces of debris popped off the tank during ascent and two of those struck the orbiter. But the hits came after the critical first 135 seconds of flight when debris can strike heat shield components with enough force to do damage. A fabric gap filler also was detected poking out from between tiles just aft of an outboard carbon-carbon panel on the shuttle's starboard wing.
"There are plenty of items of interest, but at this time, there is nothing that would require a focused inspection," LaBrode said.
Discovery docked at the station at 8:45 a.m. EDT, winding up a two-day trip that started with a spectacular launch from Kennedy Space Center.
"Super job on the rendezvous," astronaut Chris Ferguson told the shuttle crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.
"Everyone here is just ecstatic," Discovery mission specialist Scott Parazynski replied. "We're so fired up to be here and looking forward to the next several days shared with the station crew."
Soon after Discovery's arrival, Tani's custom-made seat-liner was installed in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that would be used to abandon ship if an emergency forced a crew to evacuate the outpost. It replaced one made for U.S. station flight engineer Clay Anderson.
The seat-liner swap was completed at 12:13 p.m. and officially marked a shuttle-station crew trade.
Tani now is a flight engineer on the station and will remain there until his replacement, European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts, shows up with the crew of Atlantis and the European Columbus science laboratory in December.
Anderson now is a member of the shuttle crew and will return to Earth on Nov. 6 with the Discovery astronauts. He replaced NASA astronaut Suni Williams on the station June 10 and tallied 137 days as a station flight engineer.
"Feels good," Tani told colleagues in Mission Control. "Glad to be part of the crew."
Quipped Anderson: "He's already behind one month on the rent."
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