Travel Journal

by Irene Klotz
From Yahoo News

HOUSTON (Reuters) –
NASA grounded its space shuttle fleet on Wednesday after learning that large chunks of insulating foam broke off Discovery’s external fuel tank during launch, an echo of the problem that doomed sister ship Columbia and its crew 2 1/2 years ago.

The seven Discovery astronauts were not in danger and the falling debris does not appear to have hit or damaged their ship, which took off on Tuesday on a 12-day mission to the
International Space Station, deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said.

But NASA said it would launch no more shuttles until it resolves the recurring problem of debris falling off during blastoff.

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“Until we fix this, we’re not ready to go fly again,” shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said. “I don’t know how long that is right now. We have a lot of work in front of us to figure that out and we’re going to go do that.”

Images of the shuttle’s tank, which was jettisoned as planned just before Discovery slipped into orbit, show at least three areas where large chunks of insulation foam came off, Hale and Parsons said.

The finding was troubling because a 1.67-pound (0.75-kg) piece of foam insulation broke off Columbia’s external tank during its launch on Jan. 16, 2003, and gouged a hole in the ship’s wing.

As Columbia attempted to fly through the Earth’s atmosphere for landing 16 days later, superheated gases blasted into the breach and tore the ship apart, killing the seven astronauts on board.

NASA has since spent more than $1 billion improving the tank and adding other safety upgrades. Discovery’s flight was the space agency’s first manned mission since the Columbia accident and was to be the first of two to test the new gear.

“We thought we were safe to fly as is,” Parsons said. “Obviously we were wrong.”

The largest of the three missing chunks of foam was about the same size as the one that hit Columbia, but “the video clearly shows that it fell away and did not strike the orbiter,” Parsons said.

Engineers were also looking at two areas on the shuttle’s belly where pieces of the ship’s heat-resistant tile were missing.

Discovery was on schedule to dock at the International Space Station on Thursday to deliver critical supplies and practice heat shield repair techniques during a series of spacewalks.

The Discovery astronauts spent Wednesday inspecting their ship with the shuttle’s new laser-scanning boom and will be asked to have another look at the suspect areas on Thursday.

Members of the space station crew were to take additional pictures of Discovery during a specially designed flip maneuver prior to docking.

Preliminary assessments are that Discovery will be safe to land on Aug. 7, Hale said. He and Parsons said that unlike during Columbia’s ill-fated mission, NASA has a team of 200 engineers assessing the shuttle’s condition and more inspections on tap.

Atlantis had been scheduled to launch on the next shuttle mission in September to resume construction of the International Space Station before the shuttle fleet is retired at the end of 2010