Space shuttle delivers a feel-good Fourth

This is the first flight to test the twice-redesigned tank. NASA's chief engineer and top safety official argued that this month's flight should be postponed until still other areas of the tank, known as ice/frost ramps, were redesigned as well. But the agency's administrator, Mike Griffin, sided with other experts who advised moving ahead with the current test flight.

Another foam concern surfaced on the day before the launch, after workers discovered that a 3-inch-long (7.5-centimeter-long) fragment of foam had broken off from Discovery's fuel tank during processing. Just hours before fueling the shuttle, NASA's mission management team determined that the loss of the fragment posed no additional risk.

ROCKETS' RED GLARE NASA Discovery made history as the first manned U.S. spacecraft launched on Independence Day. Here are other July 4 space highlights: 1982: Shuttle lands, ending STS-4 mission 1997: Pathfinder lands on Mars (pictured) 2005: Deep Impact probe hits comet More from CollectSpace More from Encyclopedia Astronautica

Hale said he thought that the long debate over the tank led to a "great decision process," and that the imagery gathered during this flight would lead to an even better design.

The imagery also cleared up a mysterious sighting: Astronaut Mike Fossum reported seeing what he thought was a 4- or 5-foot-long strip of blanket insulation floating off into space. But once Hale and other mission managers saw video of the "strip," they instantly recognized that it was an ice formation that had come off the nozzle of one of the shuttle's main engines.

"It's incredible to me, but I've seen it so I know it's true, that the space shuttle main engines that burn hydrogen and oxygen at 6,000 degrees on the inside can form frost on the outside, because we circulate liquid hydrogen to cool the outside of the nozzle," Hale said.

In addition to the foam concerns, NASA dealt with a couple of other technical issues — including problems with circuit breakers for heaters on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, as well as a faulty heater for one of the thrusters on the orbital maneuvering system. Mission managers determined that the heaters on the boosters wouldn't be needed, and that the crew could get along without the questionable maneuvering thruster if necessary.

"That doesn't appear to be a big issue," Hale said.

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