NASA shuttle crew uses robotic arm to inspect for damage

The crew of the space shuttle Atlantis is using the NASA vehicle's robotic arm to determine whether the spacecraft's heat shield was damaged during yesterday's blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The astronauts are using the technology to inspect critical areas of shuttle's thermal protection system, especially on the craft's nose and the edges of its wings. Data and images from the inspection, which is a routine check up after any shuttle launch, is sent down to analysts at Mission Control in Houston, according to NASA.

A robotic arm onboard the space shuttle Discovery was used in a similar fashion late in March.

After Discovery undocked from the International Space Station and the crew was preparing to return to Earth, the NASA astronauts ran the craft through ran two days of inspections to make sure it was ready for the rough flight home. To do that, the crew used the shuttle's robotic arm and an attached laser imager to inspect the external tiles that make up shuttle's heat shield, along with its nose cone and the edges of its wings.

NASA has been especially diligent about studying the heat shields since the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on reentry on Feb. 1, 2003. According to NASA, an investigation found that the disaster was caused by a hole in the heat-resistant panels that protected the wing from the high temperatures of reentry. The hole allowed superheated air into the wing, which was destroyed by it, sending the shuttle spinning out of control before it broke apart.

This is the crew's first full day in orbit. They are scheduled to rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday when astronauts will use the shuttle's robotic arm again - this time to grab onto the orbiter and pull it into the shuttle's payload bay. On Thursday, two astronauts will make the first of the mission's five spacewalks.

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