August 14, 2007—NASA is spending the day stuck between a rock and a hard place over whether to send spacewalkers to try to fix two gouged heat tiles on Endeavour’s belly. The crew has three repair techniques with them that they can use. The pink compound, like cake frosting, that the astronauts called "goop" is pictured at the left in a practice session with spacewalker Rex Walheim. There’s also a plate the crew can screw over the damage, or a heat resistant paint that be dabbed onto broken tiles.

Here’s the catch, NASA’s only tested the paint in orbit. Spacewalker Rick Mastraccio has practiced with the "goop" on Earth, with his gloved hands inside a sealed box that simulates the vacuum of space, but neither the "goop" nor the plates have been tried under real flight conditions.

NASA thinks the Shuttle can land safely with the damaged tiles with no threat to the astronauts. However the lingering concern over burning a hole in Endeavour’s right hand wing may have mission managers looking at the launch schedule. Endeavour is set to fly at least twice in 2008 to carry up the first two sections of the International Space Station’s Japanese KIBO lab. Extensive wing repairs could take Endeavour out of commission for a while. 2008 is also supposed to be the last year that Space Shuttle Atlantis flies at all. That Orbiter is scheduled for a long maintenance period, so there are indications that NASA will just retire that Shuttle after its last mission in September in 2008. That flight will be to fix the Hubble Space Telescope one last time.

On an unrelated note, many thanks to all the votes and entries in the "name Pat’s space blog contest". We'e accepting all votes and title ideas until early September. There's even a suggestion from a public radio colleague from Tallahassee…

"Pat’s Nebula on the Web-ula"

Argh.

Photo Courtesy of NASA