Nasa delays decision on shuttle repairs

An astronaut’s ripped glove forced an early end to a spacewalk and added to Nasa’s headaches as shuttle managers put off a decision on whether to order risky repairs for a deep gouge on Endeavour’s belly.

After nearly a week of agonising over the gouge, Nasa indicated yesterday it was close to completing tests and would decide today whether repairs were needed.

Endeavour’s commander, Scott Kelly, asked Mission Control which way managers were leaning.

The reply was: “Unfortunately, we have no idea which way the wind is blowing at the moment.”

Later, the chairman of the mission management team told reporters that he remained “cautiously optimistic” repairs would not be needed, based on preliminary test results.

One of the astronauts who would attempt those repairs, Rick Mastracchio, had to cut his latest spacewalk short after he noticed a hole in his left glove.

The quarter-inch-long (640 millimetre) rip in the thumb penetrated only the two outer layers of the five-layer glove, and he was never in any danger, Mission Control said.

Nevertheless, he was ordered back inside early as a precaution, and his spacewalking partner quickly finished what he was doing and followed him in.

Nasa’s spacewalk office manager, Steve Doering, said he would not want to proceed with another spacewalk until the glove problem is better understood. He expected to gather more information over the coming day.

This is the second time in three shuttle missions that a glove has been damaged during a spacewalk at the international space station. Engineers are uncertain whether sharp station edges are to blame or whether it’s wear-and-tear.

John Shannon, the mission management team’s chairman, said the glove problem would not prevent him from ordering spacewalk repairs for the gouge.

“If we decided we needed to go do this, I would feel very comfortable doing it. We’ve done a lot of spacewalks without any glove problems,” Shannon said.

The unprecedented patching job on Endeavour, if approved, would be performed on the next spacewalk, now set for Saturday, a day later than originally planned to give engineers more time to analyse the situation.

That could keep Endeavour and its crew of seven, including teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, at the space station at least an extra day.

Preliminary results indicated no need for fixing the gouge, but mission managers were withholding judgment until the completion of heat-blasting tests on the ground.

“At the moment, they don’t have all the data they would like to make their decision,” Mission Control informed the astronauts last night.

The exposed area and the gouge itself are so small that Nasa is not worried about a Columbia-type catastrophe at the flight’s end.

Engineers believe the worst of the re-entry heat should skip over the gouge. There might be some additional tile erosion around the damage, but nothing too bad, Shannon said.

Endeavour’s belly was smacked a minute after liftoff on August 8 by a piece of debris about the size of a dishwashing sponge and weighing less than an ounce.

As of now, Endeavour and its crew of seven are due to leave the space station on Monday and land two days later.