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NASA gives go-ahead to spacewalk repair work BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: August 1, 2005 A Discovery astronaut, working on the end of the space station's robot arm, will attempt to remove two protruding "gap fillers" sticking up from protective heat-shield tiles on the belly of the shuttle Discovery Wednesday during an already planned spacewalk, officials said today. NASA's mission management team decided to order the repair work after a long meeting in which aerodynamicists said they could not guarantee a problem-free re-entry with the gap fillers sticking out as is. The stumbling block was uncertainy about high-altitude, high-speed aerodynamics and how turbulence, caused by the extended gap fillers, might affect heat loads on the orbiter. Wayne Hale, chairman of the management team, told reporters late today that estimates of possible consequences ranged from no problems of any significance to exceeding the shuttle's design limits and safety margin. While the worst-case scenarios might or might not trigger a catastrophic failure, serious tile damage could result. "Today at the mission management team meeting we had a very long discussion about aerodynamics," Hale said. "I went in with a very simple question: Did we have the engineering knowledge and analysis that would, without a shadow of a doubt, allow us to be 100 percent confident the vehicle could fly safely during entry? "We investigated that at length, the team has been working for three days, they came in with a very long report, the management team asked them a lot of detailed questions and at the end of the day, the bottom line is there is large uncertainty because nobody has a very good handle on aerodynamics at those altitudes at those speeds. Given that large degree of uncertainty, life could be normal during entry or some bad things could happen. "Then we examined our options to set our minds at rest and to make sure we didn't stay up late nights worrying about bad things happening, the EVA (spacewalk) team has ... put together a very simple plan, with good safety precautions and mitigations of many hazards that will allow the crew member to go out and remove those two gap fillers. And so when we looked at the unknown versus what we do know about EVA, it was a very easy decision to add the task to EVA number three, to go remove the two little gap fillers." Read our story from earlier today for more on this issue.
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