Space shuttle on course for midnight rendezvous at space station, looks free of launch damage

Space shuttle on course for midnight rendezvous

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Endeavour zoomed toward a midnight rendezvous with the International Space Station late Tuesday, and NASA grew ever more optimistic that the shuttle is free of any launch damage.

All the pictures and information collected during the first two days of the flight indicate Endeavour suffered no serious damage during Monday’s liftoff. But the analysis is continuing, and a few hundred photos taken from the space station during Endeavour’s final approach will yield additional data, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.

Endeavour and its crew of six were due to arrive at the space station a few minutes after midnight Tuesday, delivering a new room and domed lookout. They will spend more than a week there, installing the compartments and helping with space station maintenance.

This represents the last major construction work at the orbiting outpost. Once the room, named Tranquility, and the observation deck are in place, the station will be 98 percent complete.

Five men are living at the space station. That will make for a crowd of 11 once Endeavour pulls up.

“Be sure and give the station crew a big hug from all of us,” Mission Control urged the shuttle astronauts.

Before docking, commander George Zamka was going to guide Endeavour through a 360-degree back flip so two of the space station crew could photograph the shuttle’s belly with zoom lenses. The photos will be transmitted immediately to Mission Control so experts can scour the images for any scrapes or holes.

A few pieces of foam insulation came off the external fuel tank during the launch, but none appeared to strike Endeavour.

The only oddity in the pictures from orbit was a protruding seal on the top of the left wing. The seal is part of a door for an access panel; about 4 inches of the 2- to 3-foot seal is sticking out.

Cain said the flapping seal poses no concern, but engineers will look into the matter to find out how it happened. Mission Control asked the station crew to take pictures of the seal, as the shuttle performed its somersault.

As for the rest of the wings and nose — the most vulnerable parts of the shuttle during re-entry — the laser inspection conducted earlier in the day by the astronauts was coming up empty. “Nothing that threw any unusual flags for us,” Cain told reporters.

The rigorous checks were put in place following the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Three spacewalks are planned to hook up the 23-foot Tranquility — named after the Apollo 11 moon landing site — and the seven-windowed dome. The first will get under way Thursday night.

The two Italian-built compartments cost more than $400 million.

On the Net:

NASA: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html