The crew of space shuttle Atlantis on their first day in orbit Friday trained a camera on the spaceship's thermal shield to search for any damage from a loose piece of insulation that broke off during liftoff, NASA said.
The Atlantis crew of seven trained a high-definition camera perched on the shuttle's robotic arm on areas that included the nose and wing of the craft, Mission Management Team Chairman John Shannon told reporters, as space craft headed for its rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Shannon said three small "foam losses" from the shuttle Atlantis' external fuel tank were filmed at 110 seconds, 112 seconds and 7.2 minutes after liftoff Thursday.
While the first two pieces appeared to have missed the shuttle, Shannon said, the third one may have struck the underside of the craft, although its mass and speed were too small, given the altitude at the time, to cause any damage to the heat tiles.
"So, from an ascent stand point, what we have seen so far from the ground cameras and the onboard cameras, it looks like we had an extremely clean launch and ascent," he said.
"We have a long way to go on this mission but I absolutely could not have asked for a better start," he said, adding however that the full data from the shuttle camera inspection would be available on Saturday.
The shuttle will receive a more complete inspection when it approaches the International Space Station on Saturday, and spins around completely while the ISS astronauts take video images of its entire thermal shield.
Scrutinizing the shuttle's heat shield became established procedure after the February 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster. A piece of foam insulation broke off during Columbia's liftoff, damaging the shuttle's external heat tiles and leading to the craft's destruction when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
Shannon said the Mission Management Team would meet at 2400 GMT Saturday to "decide if there is any reason to do any kind of focused inspection.
"Right now we don't see any need for that, but of course we'll look at the data very closely."
Docking with the ISS is scheduled for 1725 GMT on Saturday.
The shuttle, whose crew includes a French and a German astronaut, is on an 11-day mission to deliver the European-made, 10-ton Columbus laboratory, the first ISS addition not made in the United States or Russia.
The astronauts will use the ISS's robot arm to transfer Columbus out of the shuttle's payload bay and attach it to the space station.
Three spacewalks are scheduled during the mission, which is seen as a major step forward for European ambitions in space.
The Atlantis crew includes astronauts Leopold Eyharts of France and Hans Schlegel of Germany. Currently US and Russian astronauts are aboard the space station.
Schlegel will conduct two spacewalks during the flight to connect power and fluid lines between Columbus and the ISS.
Eyharts will begin Europe's second longest stay on the space station by replacing US astronaut Dan Tani. The German astronaut of ESA, Thomas Reiter, stayed six months in the station in 2006.
Atlantis was originally scheduled for blastoff on December 6 as part of the tight schedule of shuttle flights to complete ISS construction by 2010, when the three-craft US shuttle fleet is to be retired.
But malfunctioning circuits in the fuel gauges of the spacecraft's liquid hydrogen tank forced a two-month delay until the problem was fixed.
The Atlantis crew of seven trained a high-definition camera perched on the shuttle's robotic arm on areas that included the nose and wing of the craft, Mission Management Team Chairman John Shannon told reporters, as space craft headed for its rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Shannon said three small "foam losses" from the shuttle Atlantis' external fuel tank were filmed at 110 seconds, 112 seconds and 7.2 minutes after liftoff Thursday.
While the first two pieces appeared to have missed the shuttle, Shannon said, the third one may have struck the underside of the craft, although its mass and speed were too small, given the altitude at the time, to cause any damage to the heat tiles.
"So, from an ascent stand point, what we have seen so far from the ground cameras and the onboard cameras, it looks like we had an extremely clean launch and ascent," he said.
"We have a long way to go on this mission but I absolutely could not have asked for a better start," he said, adding however that the full data from the shuttle camera inspection would be available on Saturday.
The shuttle will receive a more complete inspection when it approaches the International Space Station on Saturday, and spins around completely while the ISS astronauts take video images of its entire thermal shield.
Scrutinizing the shuttle's heat shield became established procedure after the February 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster. A piece of foam insulation broke off during Columbia's liftoff, damaging the shuttle's external heat tiles and leading to the craft's destruction when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
Shannon said the Mission Management Team would meet at 2400 GMT Saturday to "decide if there is any reason to do any kind of focused inspection.
"Right now we don't see any need for that, but of course we'll look at the data very closely."
Docking with the ISS is scheduled for 1725 GMT on Saturday.
The shuttle, whose crew includes a French and a German astronaut, is on an 11-day mission to deliver the European-made, 10-ton Columbus laboratory, the first ISS addition not made in the United States or Russia.
The astronauts will use the ISS's robot arm to transfer Columbus out of the shuttle's payload bay and attach it to the space station.
Three spacewalks are scheduled during the mission, which is seen as a major step forward for European ambitions in space.
The Atlantis crew includes astronauts Leopold Eyharts of France and Hans Schlegel of Germany. Currently US and Russian astronauts are aboard the space station.
Schlegel will conduct two spacewalks during the flight to connect power and fluid lines between Columbus and the ISS.
Eyharts will begin Europe's second longest stay on the space station by replacing US astronaut Dan Tani. The German astronaut of ESA, Thomas Reiter, stayed six months in the station in 2006.
Atlantis was originally scheduled for blastoff on December 6 as part of the tight schedule of shuttle flights to complete ISS construction by 2010, when the three-craft US shuttle fleet is to be retired.
But malfunctioning circuits in the fuel gauges of the spacecraft's liquid hydrogen tank forced a two-month delay until the problem was fixed.