NASA says shuttle Discovery looking good

HOUSTON, July 9 (Reuters) A few nagging safety issues remain, but NASA engineers said today the problems found on shuttle Discovery since its Tuesday launch appear to be minor enough not to need repair.

In an e-mail message to the shuttle crew, they said Discovery's heat shield looked ready to withstand the rigors of landing next week, although more inspections will be done later in the 13-day flight.

A steady stream of good news about Discovery has given NASA growing confidence that its 1.3 billion dollar safety upgrade of the shuttles following the 2003 Columbia disaster is a success.

This flight was viewed by many in the U.S. space agency as a make-or-break mission for the troubled shuttle program, which is critical to finishing the half-completed 100 billion dollars space station.

One lingering concern is a couple of ceramic cloth ''gap fillers'' sticking out from between heat shield tiles. NASA managers said one has been judged safe and the other is under study, but ''it is expected that this will be cleared'' upon final analysis.

The same was true for minor damage to protective thermal blankets on the spacecraft.

''Both of these items are very close to be cleared as safe for entry,'' the e-mail said.

If it turns out that there is a problem of note, astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum could attempt to fix it while spacewalking next week.

Today's e-mail message to the crew said marks that showed up on photos and sensor data of the shuttle's wing and nose areas turned out to be little worse than possible bird droppings.

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