An astronaut's ripped glove forced an early end to a spacewalk and added to NASA's headaches as shuttle managers put off a decision on whether to order risky spacewalk repairs for a deep gouge on Endeavour's belly.
After nearly a week of agonizing over the gouge, NASA indicated it was close to wrapping up tests and would decide yesterday whether repairs were needed.
Endeavour's commander, Scott Kelly, asked Mission Control which way managers were leaning. The reply: "Unfortunately, we have no idea which way the wind is blowing at the moment." Later, the chairman of the mission management team told reporters that he remained "cautiously optimistic" repairs would not be needed, based on preliminary test results.
PHOTO: AP
One of the astronauts who would attempt those repairs, Rick Mastracchio, had to cut his latest spacewalk short on Wednesday after he noticed a hole in his left glove.
The 640mm rip in the thumb penetrated only the two outer layers of the five-layer glove, and he was never in any danger, officials said. Nevertheless, he was ordered back inside early as a precaution, and his spacewalking partner quickly finished what he was doing and followed him in.
NASA's spacewalk office manager, Steve Doering, said he would not want to proceed with another spacewalk until the glove problem is better understood. He expected to gather more information over the coming day.
This is the second time in three shuttle missions that a glove has been damaged during a spacewalk at the international space station. Engineers are uncertain whether sharp station edges are to blame or whether it's wear-and-tear.
John Shannon, the mission management team's chairman, said the glove problem would not prevent him from ordering spacewalk repairs for the gouge.
"If we decided we needed to go do this, I would feel very comfortable doing it. We've done a lot of spacewalks without any glove problems," Shannon said.
He added that the repair job would not be anywhere near where Mastracchio was on Wednesday.
The unprecedented patching job on Endeavour, if approved, would be performed on the next spacewalk, now set for tomorrow, a day later than originally planned to give engineers more time to analyze the situation. That could keep Endeavour and its crew of seven, including teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, at the space station at least an extra day.
The 9cm-long, 5cm-wide gouge -- the result of a debris strike at liftoff -- is in two of the thousands of black tiles that cover Endeavour's belly and guard against the more than 1,000oC atmospheric re-entry temperatures. Part of the gouge, a narrow one-inch strip, cuts all the way through the tiles, exposing the thin felt fabric that serves as the final thermal barrier to the ship's aluminum frame.
The exposed area and the gouge itself are so small that NASA is not worried about a Columbia-type catastrophe at flight's end. The space shuttle Columbia was destroyed in 2003 when hot atmospheric gases seeped into a hole in its wing and melted the wing from the inside out.
Rather, the concern is that if too much heat enters the crevice, the underlying aluminum structure might be damaged enough to warrant lengthy post-flight repairs. That, in turn, could lead to future launch delays and disrupt space station construction.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion