Shuttle astronauts to make final damage inspections

HOUSTON, July 14: Astronauts on shuttle Discovery said they consider the orbiter safe for the trip home, but prepared today to inspect it for damage from space debris.

They were to use cameras and sensors on a robotic arm to check the spacecraft twice more before their scheduled return to Earth on Monday.

Earlier inspections found no damage from debris at launch, but this time the shuttle crew will look for nicks from such things as dust-size ''micrometeoroids'' that circle the planet and may have collided with Discovery during flight.

The crew members doubted they would find anything, but the inspections, to be conducted today and tomorrow, are part of NASA's effort to avoid another shuttle disaster.

''We've been flying space shuttles for a long time and we've never had any kind of critical damage from a micrometeoroid so it's pretty remote,'' pilot Mike Kelly said in a media interview from space.

''Based on what we've seen over the last 10 days, the inspections we've done, the data the ground's analyzed, we've got a great ship.

It's ready to come home,'' he said.

NASA has instituted extensive in-flight inspections as part of 1.3 billion dollars in safety upgrades since Columbia fell to Earth on February 2001.

Based on what they have seen so far, NASA officials said Discovery looks fit to withstand the fiery return home, but they want to be sure.

A crack in Columbia's wing heat shield, caused by loose fuel tank insulation during launch, went undetected and the shuttle broke apart while returning to Florida 16 days later when hot gases penetrated its structure. The seven astronauts on board were killed. This flight, only the second since Columbia, included not only extensive inspections, but also a test of heat shield repair techniques during one of the mission's three spacewalks.

During that test on Wednesday, a spatula used by astronaut Piers Sellers floated away and is now part of the debris in space, but NASA said it has drifted far from Discovery and is not a danger.

Sellers joked that he would replace the spatula with ''the very best Home Depot can offer. I'm sure it will come out of my pay.'' Discovery launched from Florida on July 4 and linked up with the International Space Station 352 kilometers above the Earth two days later.

Sellers and Michael Fossum, on their second spacewalk, repaired a transporter on the station that NASA said was critical to continued construction of the half-finished, 0 billion space outpost.

Before today's inspection, the astronauts, in the first preparations for the return home, were to unhook from the station a cargo module they brought loaded with goods from Earth and place it back in Discovery's cargo bay.

The cargo on the Italian-built module was transferred to the space station and has been replaced with more than two tons of station trash and unneeded equipment to be returned to Earth.

Discovery was scheduled to leave the station tomorrow and, weather permitting, land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday morning.

Reuters