© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Ongoing Tower Work Impacting KUNI (90.9 FM)

NASA Rules Out Additional Spacewalk for Repairs

NASA engineers decide that a piece of bulging insulation poses no threat to the Space Shuttle Discovery. That means astronauts will not have to take a fourth spacewalk to fix the problem.

The insulating blanket sits just below one of the shuttle's cockpit windows. Engineers worried that it might break off and hit the craft as it returned to Earth next week. Wind tunnel tests and computer simulations showed the insulation would pose no threat to shuttle as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.

The shuttle is now scheduled to disconnect from the international space station very early Saturday morning. It will then head back to earth early Monday morning.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.