Atlantis Astronauts to Inspect Shuttle Heat Shield After Final Launch

The space shuttle Atlantis'
astronauts will carefully inspect
their orbiter's heat shield today
(July 9) to make sure it wasn't
damaged during the shuttle's
final launch Friday (July 8).
Atlantis lifted off from NASA's
Kennedy Space Center
in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the
135th and final mission of
NASA's 30-year space shuttle
program. The orbiter is now
playing catch-up with the
International Space Station,
where it plans to dock on
Sunday (July 10).
Commander Chris Ferguson and
his four-person crew will spend
their second day in space
conducting a detailed scan of the
thermal insulation tiles on
Atlantis' underbelly and wings to
make sure they weren't
damaged during launch.
The inspection has been a
routine precaution taken on
every mission after the space
shuttle Columbia and its seven
astronauts were destroyed in
2003 because of damage to that
orbiter's heat shield. The
protective tiles on the shuttle are
necessary to shield the orbiter
from the intense heat of re-entry
to Earth during landing.
Preliminary analysis of footage
from Atlantis' 11:29 a.m. EDT
(1529 GMT) blastoff did not
indicate any major cause for
concern, NASA officials said. But
the inspection should provide
more detailed readings to ensure
the orbiter was not dinged by
falling ice or foam debris from
the shuttle's huge external fuel
tank.
The Atlantis astronauts are
scheduled to begin the scan at
8:19 a.m. EDT (1219 GMT), after
waking up at 3:59 a.m. EDT
(0759 GMT). The spaceflyers will
use a 50-foot (15-meter) sensor-
tipped inspection pole attached
to the end of the shuttle's
robotic arm to inspect the
spacecraft. Images and videos
will be sent down to engineers at
NASA's mission control center in
Houston for review.
Flying along with Ferguson on
the mission are pilot Doug
Hurley and mission specialists
Sandra Magnus and Rex
Walheim. Each astronaut is a
veteran and each has been to
the space station before.
"Now,the configuration has
changed a little bit over the
years,so I think we’re all eagerly
anticipating seeing what the
space station looks like today,"
Ferguson said in a preflight
NASA interview.
The primary goal of Atlantis' final
mission is to deliver 9,500
pounds (4,318 kilograms) of
spare hardware and supplies to
outfit the International Space
Station for the years ahead, after
the shuttles retire. After this
mission, NASA is mothballing
Atlantis, Discovery and
Endeavour to work on
developing new spaceships to
carry humans to an asteroid and
Mars.
"It's a very busy mission,"said
Magnus in a preflight interview.
"Our prime job is to take tons of
logistics up to space station and
get it up there while we still have
the huge cargo-carrying capacity
of the shuttle available."
This STS-135 mission is Atlantis'
33rd flight after nearly 26 years
of operation. The shuttle is
slated to land on July 20 and
then be retired to the Visitor's
Center at Kennedy Space
Center.

Source://www.space.com/12224-shuttle-atlantis-astronauts-inspect-heat-shield.html