Prop for Friday, May 15

HEATTILE

"Will Atlantis' astronauts repair the heat tiles before reentry?"

After the space shuttle Columbia disaster, NASA instituted a policy of inspecting the heat shield on all shuttles after take off. During this routine check of the shuttle Atlantis, NASA discovered that four of the protective tiles had been damaged during take off. According to NASA officials, debris hit the tiles 103 seconds into take off, but didn't cause too much damage. However, while the damage was minor, NASA is hardly in the business of taking risks. With memories of Columbia still fresh in the mind of mission control, they might still opt to deploy some of their repair options, even in spite of NASA's characterization of the damage as just s"some dings". Currently, the shuttle is making its way towards the Hubble Space Telescope to perform the final servicing of the venerable satellite.

The prop will pay POP$100 if NASA opts to repair the shuttle's tiles before May 29th, 2009. This prop can be checked at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html.

Related Links:

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=368DB680-1A64-6A71-CE07110082AB8A38

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=22918953001

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/05/12/space.shuttle.damage/index.html