Shuttle landing delayed, more inspections ordered

APE CANAVERAL, Sep 20 (Reuters) Space shuttle Atlantis astronauts will make another inspection of their spacecraft to ensure unidentified objects seen flying near the ship were not pieces of its heat shield or other critical components, NASA managers said.

The US space agency delayed Atlantis' today's scheduled homecoming from a mission to the International Space Station after a small dark object was seen in video taken by a remotely operated camera in the shuttle's cargo hold.

Instead of landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the six-member crew will use Atlantis' robot arm and may use a sensor-studded inspection boom today to scrutinize their ship's wings and other key landing components.

''Since we have the time and capability, we will go off and do a survey of the critical parts of the space shuttle,'' said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

NASA now plans to land the shuttle at 6:22 am EDT (1552 IST) tomorrow, although the ship has enough supplies to stay in space until Saturday if additional in-flight work or poor weather further delays landing.

The best guess of mission managers is that something, possibly ice, broke loose and floated away from the shuttle during or after the routine pre-landing check of its steering jets and flight systems, which took place early yesterday.

''This will probably always remain a mystery,'' Hale said.

A second smaller object was spotted later in the day by Atlantis flight engineer Dan Burbank, who snapped pictures to relay to Mission Control for analysis. Hale said the object appeared to be a plastic bag.

If any problems are found during the inspections, the shuttle could return to the space station for additional assessments or to await a rescue mission for its crew. That decision would have to be made by tomorrow, Hale said.

Atlantis was launched September 9 on the first construction mission to the orbiting outpost since before the shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

Atlantis carried a 372 million dollar solar power unit and truss structure that its crew installed during a weeklong stay at the station. NASA plans at least 14 more construction missions to the outpost before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

Meanwhile, the space station crew prepared for the arrival of a new group of visitors. A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying incoming station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin and American tourist Anousheh Ansari was scheduled to arrive at 1:24 am (1054 IST) today.

Space station crew members Jeff Williams and Pavel Vinogradov are scheduled to return to Earth, along with Ansari, on September 28.

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

REUTERS DKS BST0619