Shuttle crew inspects Atlantis for mystery object

HOUSTON, Sep 20: Shuttle Atlantis astronauts used cameras on a robot arm to inspect their spacecraft today to see if a mystery object seen falling near the ship posed a threat to its safety.

The scan was the third of the mission and had not been scheduled until the object was spotted yesterday, creating concern that a key component, such as a piece of the heat shield that protects the shuttle during its fiery descent to Earth, had broken off.

Atlantis was supposed to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, but the mystery object and a forecast of bad weather led NASA to postpone the shuttle's return until at least tomorrow.

The previous inspections, on September 10 and 18, revealed no damage. NASA managers said the unidentified object was most likely harmless debris, but they ordered the latest survey just to be sure.

The U S space agency operates under much stricter safety rules since shuttle Columbia broke apart while landing on February 1, 2003, due to heat shield damage that went undetected.

The accident killed Columbia's seven astronauts and caused NASA to ground the shuttle program for 2 1/2 years.

The Atlantis mission follows two test flights to refine post-Columbia safety upgrades and was the first of at least 15 flights to complete the half-finished International Space Station by 2010, when shuttles will be retired.

Atlantis was on its way back from the station, where its crew installed a 2 million solar power unit and truss structure, when the dark object was seen during television shots from Atlantis.

Shuttle crew inspects Atlantis for mystery object PIECE OF PLASTIC Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said in yesterday evening briefing that the object could be ice or perhaps a small piece of plastic that came loose when the Atlantis crew tested flight controls yesterday morning.

The plastic piece, a spacer beween heat shield tiles, was seen hanging out during an earlier survey and deemed non-threatening.

''That could be what we saw,'' he said. ''It's not held in there by anything but friction. By the shock (of the tests), it could have floated away.'' A second smaller object was spotted later yesterday by Atlantis flight engineer Dan Burbank, but Hale said it appeared to be ''just a plastic bag that came from somewhere (in the shuttle) and got loose.'' Should the inspection turn up something worrisome, the shuttle could go back to the space station for further assessments or to wait for a rescue mission for its crew.

A return to the station would make things crowded there because a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, U S astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, and American tourist Anousheh Ansari arrived early today after launch on Monday from Kazakhstan.

With the station's newly-installed 240-foot-long solar-power array in the background, Soyuz could be seen in television shots creeping toward the space outpost 220 miles (352 km) above Earth before docking with a gentle bump.

''We have arrived,'' Tyurin said.

He and Lopez-Alegria will replace Jeff Williams and Pavel Vinogradov, who have been on the station for six months and are scheduled to return to Earth with Ansari on September 28.

German astronaut Thomas Reiter will stay aboard with the new station crew until his replacement arrives during the next shuttle mission, currently scheduled for December.

REUTERS