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NASA: Shuttle Damage From Bird Strike Unlikely

POSTED: Wednesday, July 27, 2005
UPDATED: 7:08 am EDT July 28,2005

NASA officials said space shuttle Discovery was probably traveling too slow to sustain any damage when a bird slammed into the craft's fuel tank nose cone seconds after liftoff Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.

Tuesday night, NASA released an image of Discovery striking the bird.

  • "It happened just as Discovery was clearing the launch pad and it is too early to tell whether that strike caused any flight safety issues," Local 6 News reporter Mike DeForest said. Click here for larger image.

    "It happened just as Discovery was clearing the launch pad and it is too early to tell whether that strike caused any flight safety issues," Local 6 News reporter Mike DeForest said.
    SLIDESHOW: Debris Falls Off Shuttle
    VIDEO: Video Shows Pieces Coming Loose
    IMAGES: See The Launch


    The image was captured by one of more than 100 cameras photographing every angle of Discovery's launch.

    "Without ever having seen these camera angles before, they don't know if debris has always shed off or if they had hit birds in the past," DeForest said. "This is their first glimpse and of course they will do inspections later this week to see if that caused any type of dangerous situation."

    NASA officials were also looking at video of a portion of Tuesday's shuttle launch "frame-by-frame" after one of several cameras aboard the craft captured what appeared to be pieces of debris separating from Discovery.

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    NASA said Wednesday a chipped thermal tile on Discovery's belly does not appear to be a danger, and it cautioned the public against overreacting to every speck of damage sustained by the shuttle during liftoff.

    The space agency expected some debris to fall off during launch, and some did.

    The big question is whether any of it harmed Discovery, and the answer is still a few days away, NASA said one day after the ship blasted off on the first shuttle mission since the Columbia tragedy 2 1/2 years ago.

    Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

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