NASA cleared Atlantis for landing despite debris. Kim McIntyre discusses inspection and safety measures.
Transcript
Well, NASA has cleared the shuttle Atlantis for landing tomorrow morning, I think at about six-forty-one, despite astronauts spotting three new pieces of debris floating in space. This is one day after the discovery of two other mysterious objects. Kim McIntyre is down at Johnson Space Center and she has an update for us. Hey, Kim. Hi, Mike and Juliette. Yeah, NASA gave the astronauts the good news for a landing tomorrow, but only after they did a very intense study of the shuttle's protective heat shield. Now, they had five pieces of debris floating around close to the shuttle today. NASA wanted to make sure the shuttle was intact and ready to withstand the long and dangerous journey back home. NASA says nothing stood out and was not out of place during the four and a half hour inspection of the shuttle, but mission managers did an additional survey of the shuttle's protective heat shield anyway. The surveys were initially sparked by a mysterious object floating under the spacecraft yesterday. It was detected shortly after a routine check of the shuttle's steering jets. Since Columbia, NASA developed several tools and procedures to safeguard the shuttle while in space. NASA admits they may never know exactly what the unknown objects are, but confirms the shuttle is ready to handle the 3,000 degree temperatures it will meet as it reenters the Earth's atmosphere. Over the years, we have chased many, many, many of these these things maybe not with the visibility that this one has gotten and rarely if ever been able to pinpoint exactly where they came from and always finding out that it didn't pose us any hazard the crew of Atlantis is asleep now and after a 12-day mission in an intense 24-hour period, they are looking forward to coming home tomorrow at 6.21 Eastern Time. Back to you, New York. Thanks, Kim. Kim, thank you. Joining us now, former astronaut Pierre Thouet. Pierre flew on three shuttle missions, and thank you very much for being here. The audience is going to win. We're talking about this. Ask the question, Mike. Ask the question. No, my contention is there's as many as 10,000, 12,000 pieces of junk up there floating around. You're going to see some of it. That's right, Mike. And probably the biggest thing you have to worry about is it in the same orbit as with you or some other orbit. If it's in the same orbit, it's not as dangerous because it's not going as fast. If it's in another orbit and it hits you at, say, twice the speed you're going at, say, 35,000 miles an hour, it can cause serious damage to the shuttle. So what could these things possibly be? I mean, a lot of people are writing in saying satellites? Could they be satellites? Pieces of satellites? Well, they're unlikely to be off a satellite because of the fact that they're in the same orbit as the shuttle. They're floating along with the orbital. So more than likely, it's something that was maybe dropped in the payload bay during the servicing of the shuttle. And during the thruster firings and the flight control checks yesterday, they floated up out of the bay and just started falling off. I don't recall seeing this in recent missions. Is this something that happens frequently and it's just not reported? Occasionally. On my second mission, which was the first flight of Endeavor, one of these floated up about four hours after we opened the payload. I've been looking for that. It was an ailing wrench. I wondered who lost it. Yeah, it was me. I was working on my car. I'll tell you, there's a big fine for that when you lose these things aboard a spacecraft. Was that yours? No, it was actually dropped by a worker, I think, when they were constructing the spaceship. And they look for these things, but they can't find them sometimes, and they just happen to float up. Oh, that's like leaving the knife in surgery, leaving it in somebody's belly. That's not good. So should we be concerned? At 641, we'll have coverage, of course, live for you here on Fox News Channel. It's during Fox & Friends First. You know, I'm a little nervous, I've got to tell you. I think they've done what they need to do. They did an inspection of the orbiter, both the underside and in the payload bay. The two things you have to be concerned about, again, are the high are the high speed impacts which doesn't look like that would be a problem right now the second thing is it is a piece of orbiter that's critical hardware that you need to operate say the payload bay doors and latch them down i seriously doubt that's the case so the thing is they're not going to stop trying to figure this out once the orbiter lands they'll come back and they'll try to figure it out up here i want to jump in because jul Julia had a better question, but I want to jump in here. So, okay, if there was trouble, could Atlantis get back to the space station? Do they have enough fuel to do that? And if they do, the Soyuz is already in their parking spot. Would they have to back out and get out of there? Well, there'd probably be a bit of a debate what to do, but certainly they have enough fuel, and the Soyuz may have to go to another docking port, or they might just have to have the Soyuz go off. Oh, there's more than one docking port on the station? There's more than one, but they might not be in the right position. Come on, Mike. Get with it. So you're not concerned at all about reentry? You think this is going to be a smooth reentry? Yeah, I think it'll be a smooth entry. I mean, they've done all the things that they need to do to make sure that it's going to be fine. And as always, they're trying to be very careful and very cautious and very conservative. Pierre Stewart, thank you very much, sir, for joining us today. Are you going to be heading back into space any time soon? Only if they have another Space Cowboys movie, you know, the retired astronaut going to space. I'll be hoping to get one of those roles. You look like a kid. You look like you've got dozens of years ahead of you. Well, maybe in a few years I'll be able to do it again, though. Well, we wish you the best of luck. Thanks a lot for joining us today. Thank you.