Great Feat by Robinson, the first man to repair a shuttle in space

He is a mechanical engineer too :)

Read the story from Yahoo

 Astronaut May Face Another Shuttle Repair By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace
Writer
2 hours, 49 minutes ago, Aug 3, 2005, 11.55 IST

SPACE CENTER, Houston - With a gentle tug of his gloved right hand,
Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson removed two worrisome pieces of filler
material from the shuttle's belly Wednesday in an unprecedented space
repair job that drew a big sigh of relief from     NASA.

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But he may have to go out again to fix yet another trouble spot.

Robinson was barely back inside the shuttle and out of his spacesuit when
Mission Control informed the crew there was a chance that a fourth
spacewalk may be needed Friday to deal with a torn thermal blanket below a
cockpit window.

The concern is that a roughly 1-foot section of the blanket could rip away
during re-entry, whip backward and slam into the shuttle, perhaps causing
grave damage. Engineers expect to know by Thursday afternoon whether the
danger is real and whether any blanket trimming is required.

There was no immediate response from the exhausted but exhilarated
astronaut.

He and his six fellow astronauts awoke late Wednesday for some time off to
enjoy their trip to orbit. They also planned to honor those who died in the
Columbia tragedy during a tribute from space.

It took Robinson just seconds earlier Wednesday to pull out each short
dangling strip of ceramic-fiber cloth, which engineers had feared might
cause the shuttle to overheat during its descent through the atmosphere and
lead to another Columbia-type disaster.

Robinson never had to pull out his forceps or his makeshift hacksaw, which
he took along just in case the material was stuck between the thermal tiles
and he needed to employ more force.

It was a delicate operation: Robinson had to be careful not to bump into
the shuttle's fragile thermal tiles and make things worse.

Standing on the end of the international space station's 58-foot robot arm,
he tugged out the first piece as the two linked spacecraft passed over
Massachusetts. By the time he had pulled out the next fabric strip 10
minutes later, he had crossed the Atlantic and was zooming over the French
coast.

"That was the ride of the century!" Robinson exclaimed.

"Steve, we trained for four years. You're going to spend the next four
years signing autographs," said his spacewalking partner, Soichi Noguchi.

Robinson, a 49-year-old mechanical engineer and musician who took his
childhood space-cadet lunchbox into orbit with him, became the first person
to venture beneath an orbiting shuttle and the first person to repair a
shuttle's fragile thermal skin in space.

His crewmates inside the shuttle kept an eye on him via the robot-arm
camera. His spacewalking partner watched from 75 feet away, though he lost
sight of him at one point.

But Robinson described what he was seeing and doing the entire time, so his
colleagues would know he was safe.

"I'm pulling. It's coming out very easily," Robinson called. "The offending
gap filler has been removed."

The second piece slid out even more easily, with just a gentle tug of
Robinson's right thumb and index finger.

"I was absolutely relieved and I think you could probably hear the sigh of
relief throughout the building" after the first piece came out, flight
director Paul Hill said. "And when he pulled the second one out, it was a
huge relief and it definitely felt like the rest is downhill from here."

The mood aboard Discovery also improved dramatically. Space station flight
director Mark Ferring said he could hear "a palpable change in the tone" of
the astronauts' voices.

The spacewalk ended after six hours. Robinson and Noguchi also installed a
massive toolbox filled with spare parts on the space station.

NASA had spent four days analyzing the potential threat of the so-called
thermal tile gap fillers and what to do about them.

Officials insisted it was absolutely safe to simply remove the fillers.
Their primary purpose in those two spots was to prevent the silica glass
fiber thermal tiles from rubbing against each other and chipping during
liftoff.

With the gap filler problem behind them, teams of engineers and
thermodynamic experts turned their attention to the torn, crumpled blanket
beneath the commander's side window. Blanket samples were rushed from Cape
Canaveral, Fla., to California for wind tunnel testing.

The blanket is covered with a quiltlike fabric and stuffed like a pillow,
and serves as insulation. The insulation would blow harmlessly away if the
blanket came apart; the concern is where the top layer of fabric might go
and how much damage it might do at high descending speeds, despite its less
than 1-ounce weight, said deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.

"Worst case, we could do some structural damage and that's obviously not
something that we want to incur," Hale said Wednesday night.

The blanket was apparently ripped by debris during the July 26 liftoff, the
first shuttle flight since Columbia disintegrated on re-entry 2 1/2 years
ago. It is a type of blanket problem never seen before, Hale said.

"I think in the old days, we would not have worried about this nearly so
much," Hale said, referring to NASA's pre-Columbia days. He said he
believes the likelihood of a repair is low, but noted: "We're just pounding
this flat. We're not going to leave any stone unturned at this stage, to
make sure the crew's safe during entry."

Discovery and its crew of seven are scheduled to return to Earth on Monday.

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On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/index.html