July 5, 2006 — After two time-consuming redesigns, the space shuttle's external fuel tank, which triggered the loss of Columbia in 2003, appears to have passed the rigors of launch with stellar results, the shuttle program manager said Tuesday.
Shuttle Discovery lifted off on Tuesday afternoon on only the second mission since the Columbia disaster. If the tank had continued to shed large pieces of its foam insulation, as it did during Columbia's launch and the first post-Columbia mission last year, NASA may have been forced to ground the shuttle fleet permanently.
The agency is running out of time to finish building the International Space Station, which is dependent on the shuttle fleet to deliver and install the remaining laboratories, power systems and other components.
The shuttles are to be retired in 2010 and program funding diverted to developing a set of new vehicles capable of transporting people and cargo to the moon and beyond.
Days of inspections and analysis are pending, but the initial consensus is that Discovery's tank shed small pieces of foam that popped off past the point where they would pose an impact risk to the shuttle.
NASA managers have repeatedly stressed that the tank would never be shed-free. Rather the goal of the redesigns was to prevent large chunks of foam from flying away at a time when they could impact and damage the shuttle's delicate heat shield, such as what happened to Columbia.
"I think the tank performed very, very well indeed," shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told reporters Tuesday evening after imagery experts had completed an initial assessment of launch video and photographs.
"As opposed to where we were last year, we saw nothing that gives us any kind of concern about the health of the crew or the vehicle or any pause to think that we wouldn't be safe to fly the next tank," he said.
Though the main goal of Discovery's flight was to prove the problems with the fuel tank have been resolved, it also is critical to the continued assembly of the space station.
Among the two tons of cargo packed aboard the shuttle for delivery to the orbital outpost are replacement parts for the station's broken rail cart. Without the cart, shuttle Atlantis, which is targeted for launch as early as Aug. 28, will not be able to deliver and install the station's next truss segment and solar array.
The shuttle crew was scheduled to spend their first full day in space scanning their ship's wings and nosecap for any sign of damaged from launch debris. Additional inspections will be done by the space station crew before the shuttle docks on Thursday.
