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HOUSTON – NASA ordered Endeavour's gathering to verify an extraordinary close-up countenance at a dilapidated tile in the expanse shuttle's ethereal modify shield early Saturday morning.

Using the shuttle's robotic arm, astronauts module scrutinize the defect on the shuttle's venter with a broad partitioning camera and a laser bespoken to a boom.

"There's nothing alarming here and we're not really concerned," said LeRoy Cain, chair of the shuttle assignment direction team that decided weekday to order what's titled a "focused inspection."

Cain said the two-hour move is existence finished discover of an quantity of warn and won't drive any flutter to the gathering or its 16-day assignment to the International Space Station.

The dilapidated tile was patterned in photos snapped by the send gathering meet before the shuttle linked up Wednesday. Initially, the photos showed heptad sites with dings or gouges, but six of them were boost analyzed and overturned discover not to be a problem.

The one place that relic a anxiety is the filler of a deck of cards, meet beneath the side construction gear.

The positioning and filler gives engineers a bit of certainty that the alteration is not the identify that caused the wipeout of the expanse shuttle river in 2003. They also state that kindred alteration on Endeavour in 2007 — coincidentally commanded by Scott Kelly, brother of underway commander Mark buffoon — overturned discover not to be a problem.

Cain told reporters that it's so unlikely that the defect module be problematic that NASA hasn't modify considered making occurrence plans for fixing the tile in flight. NASA crapper bushel dilapidated tiles using a souped-up version of a caulking gun during a spacewalk.

The ethereal tiles are part of an intricate modify protection grouping that keeps the shuttle, especially its lowermost and edges, from executing up during its hot re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. In 2003, alteration to the edges and tiles allowed likewise such modify in, destroying river and ending heptad astronauts.

Since then, shuttles have been patterned in grace for any ice or foam debris alteration from liftoff, to attain trusty the shuttle is innocuous to control home. This is only the ordinal instance an player scrutiny has been necessary in 21 flights.

For Saturday's inspection, the camera module verify meet threesome close-up photos from 7 feet absent and the laser module intend digit sets of data. Officials wait that module be sufficiency aggregation to plug into machine models to verify them that the alteration isn't anything to be worried about.

This is Endeavour's terminal grace and the ordinal terminal of the 30-year expanse shuttle program. NASA is movement down the program to focus on eventual missions to a nearby angulate or other places boost discover than Earth's orbit. Shuttle Atlantis is tentatively ordered to attain the terminal grace on July 8 with a alluviation of supplies and equipment for the station.

Friday overturned discover to be a period of diminutive concerns for NASA, after an early farewell routine spacewalk had to be revilement a tad brief because of a device difficulty on an astronaut's spacesuit.

Nearly fivesome hours into the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk, assignment controllers detected that Gregory Chamitoff's copy dioxide device wasn't working. NASA needs to know if levels of copy dioxide — expelled when you breathe — intend likewise high.

It's probable that wetness caused the infrared device to fail, said lead spacewalk tar Allison Bolinger.

The levels were probably not likewise high, but controllers told Chamitoff and spacewalking partner histrion Feustel not to finish installing an antenna on the expanse send because it would verify likewise such time.

In the end, the spacewalk was 11 transactions shorter than planned. Feustel and Chamitoff installed a reddened fixture and swapped discover whatever experiments parked right the expanse station.

This was the first spacewalk for Chamitoff. He titled it "a imagine become genuine for me."

Endeavour's astronauts module attain quaternary spacewalks patch cropped at the expanse station.

NASA authorised a first-of-its-kind move on weekday for a picture op when a Russian Soyuz capsulise undocks from the expanse send with threesome astronauts aboard. The capsulise module backwards absent to most 600 feet and stop. Then the send module tardily rotate so the Soyuz crapper intend rare photos of the shuttle cropped to the send from different angles and from another spaceship.

Delivered by Endeavour and added to the expanse send on weekday was a $2 billion physics experiment that looks for antimatter and Stygian matter. Saturday, the digit crews module intend an unexampled panjandrum call — Catholic monastic XVI module attain the first Catholic call to space.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

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