At a press briefing this evening the leader of the Mission Management Team announced that a focused inspection will not not be made of 16 dings in the forward starboard section of the shuttle's heat shield.
"These are pretty thick tiles up front," Mission Management Team Chairman Mike Moses said.
One tile, however, had a gouge .6 inches deep. Though gouged, the tile, less than 2 inches thick, was not cracked and could withstand the heat of re-entry, Moses said.
"The rest of the underside of the orbiter was in really good shape," Moses said. He predicted that Endeavour would be declared safe for re-entry either today or Monday.
Moses said NASA engineers are baffled at the foam losses during Wednesday's launch from the area between the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks. Only seven shuttle missions remain before the program ends next year.
"We're never going to completely understand the foam mechanism," Moses said. "This is a head-scratcher."
Contact Peterson at 242-3673 or ppeterson@floridatoday.com.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
1 comment:
I can only see two possibilities.
1) Caused by the number of times the tank was filled. Unlikely on this part of the tank, when the actual tanks would have been colder.
2) A manufacturing defect. And the tank did have a misaligned flange for the vent line.
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