Tile Damage Penetrates Completely Through Space Shuttle Endeavor’s Heat Shield Tiles
by John Little on 12/08/2007
This is fairly bad news for NASA and the crew:
NASA may have to send astronauts on a special spacewalking mission to mend a 3-inch gouge on Shuttle Endeavor’s belly.
The hole appears to have penetrated all the way through two heat shield tiles that protect the orbiter.
Images gathered by lasers and cameras on an extension to the shuttle’s robotic arm confirmed Sunday that the divot went through the 1.12-inch thick tile, exposing some of the heat-resistant felt-like material below.
That material, as well as the tile itself, is designed to protect the orbiter from burning up during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
“It’s a fairly deep gouge,” John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said Sunday.
The good news is that they are not left without options. A huge amount of work has been pored into solving this problem since the Columbia disaster. If repairs are required, which is likely, there are three alternatives:
If a repair is ordered in this latest incident, the astronauts would use one of three re- pair kits: an emissivity wash to paint the surface; a protective plate that could by screwed in- to the body over the hole; or “the goo,” a putty-like sub- stance that would be applied by hand.
Although it hasn’t been discussed I wouldn’t be surprised to see them use a combination of the three. I will be surprised if they choose not to repair the damage before re-entry.
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