A post-launch inspection of the shuttle's heat tiles, outer edges and blankets found a gap in a thermal blanket on the left side of the shuttle.
The gap, about 4 inches by 6 inches, appears to have been caused by air lifting the corner of the blanket up, John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said at a news conference."It's not a great deal of concern right now, but there's a lot of work to be done," Shannon said. "Other than that, the vehicle is very clean."
The area does not get hotter than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit during the shuttle's return to Earth and is not a place where NASA is usually concerned about potentially fatal problems, NASA spokeswoman Lynette Madison said. Still, engineers were using photos to create a three-dimensional model of the gap just in case.
Thermal blankets came unstitched during flights of Discovery in 2005 and 2006 without any problems, and thermal tiles were lost in the same area where the blanket is on Atlantis on two of the earliest shuttle flights.
Engineers aren't sure if stitching on the blanket came loose or if the blanket, covering a pod of engines near the shuttle's tail, was hit by debris during launch. NASA engineers will study more photos of the torn blanket. Using the images, engineers can build models and perform aerodynamic and thermodynamic tests to determine whether the peeled-back blanket would pose problems during Atlantis' re-entry into Earth's atmosphere at the end of the mission.
If engineers decide the blanket needs to be fixed, Atlantis' astronauts could trim if off, tuck it back into protective tiles or cover it with a plate held in place by adhesive goo during a spacewalk.
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