With the countdown for Discovery in its final hours, NASA was dealt an embarrassing setback when a window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail. But the space agency quickly fixed the problem and said it was still on track for launch yesterday.
The mishap on Tuesday was an eerie reminder of the very thing that doomed Columbia two-and-a-half years ago -- damage to the spaceship's fragile thermal shield.
The lightweight plastic cover on one of the Discovery cockpit windows came loose while the spaceship was on the launch pad, falling more than 18m and striking a bulge in the fuselage, said Stephanie Stilson, the NASA manager in charge of Discovery's launch preparations.
No one knows why the cover -- held in place with tape -- fell off, she said. The covers are used prior to launch to protect the shuttle's windows, then removed before liftoff.
Two tiles on an aluminum panel were damaged, and the entire panel was replaced with a spare in what Stilson said was a minor repair job.
The cover, which weighs less than 1kg, struck a part of the fuselage that houses one of the engines used by the shuttle to maneuver in orbit.
Launch managers were still awaiting an engineering analysis on whether the blow caused any damage to the engine hardware, but Stilson said she was confident there would be no problems.
Word of the mishap came just two hours after NASA declared Discovery ready to fly to space for the first time since the Columbia disaster.
Until the window cover fell, NASA's only concern had been the weather.
Because of thunderstorms in the forecast, the chances of acceptable weather at launch time were put at 60 percent. The last few technical concerns had been resolved on Tuesday afternoon at one final launch review by NASA's managers.
"It is utterly crucial for NASA, for the nation, for our space program to fly a safe mission," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said after the meeting. "We have done everything that we know to do."
The families of the seven astronauts killed during Columbia's catastrophic re-entry praised the accident investigators, a NASA oversight group and the space agency itself for defining and reducing the dangers.
Like those who lost loved ones in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire and the Challenger launch explosion, the Columbia families said they grieve deeply "but know the exploration of space must go on."
"We hope we have learned and will continue to learn from each of these accidents so that we will be as safe as we can be in this high-risk endeavor," they said in a statement. "Godspeed, Discovery."
Discovery will be setting off on the 114th space shuttle flight in 24 years with a redesigned external fuel tank and nearly 50 other improvements made in the wake of the Columbia tragedy.
As part of the 12-day flight, Discovery's astronauts will test various techniques for patching cracks and holes in the thermal shielding.
The crew members will also experiment with a new 15m boom designed to give them a three-dimensional laser view of the wings and nose cap and help them find any damage caused by liftoff debris.
That is on top of all the pictures of the spacecraft that will be taken by more than 100 cameras positioned around the launch site and aboard two planes and the shuttle itself.
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