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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Shuttle repair ‘simple,’ yet tricky


A NASA employee shows how a makeshift hacksaw could be used to cut off the protruding gap fillers. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press

SPACE CENTER, Houston – Employing the kind of NASA ingenuity seen during Apollo 13, an astronaut prepped for an emergency repair job on Discovery’s exterior today with forceps, scissors and a hacksaw fashioned out of a blade and a little duct tape.

Stephen Robinson’s mission was to remove two short pieces of filler material that were sticking out of the shuttle’s belly. NASA feared the material could lead to a repeat of the 2003 Columbia tragedy during Discovery’s re-entry next week.

Astronauts have never ventured beneath an orbiting shuttle before, and have never tried making repairs to the fragile thermal skin while in space.

“No doubt about it, this is going to be a very delicate task, but as I say, a simple one,” Robinson said Tuesday.

The plan was carefully worked out on the ground over the past four days. It called for maneuvering Robinson underneath Discovery – a no-man’s land, up to now – on the end of the linked international space station’s 58-foot robot arm.

The hope was that Robinson could simply pull the stiff fabric out with his gloved hands. If a gentle tug did not work, he was to pull a little harder with forceps. And if that didn’t work, he was supposed to use a hacksaw put together in orbit with a deliberately bent blade, plastic ties, Velcro and the handyman’s favorite all-purpose fix-it: duct tape.