Discovery Update

Space Shuttle Discovery astronauts Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum made their third and final space walk yesterday. The space walks were all successful, and during the time, the two were able to check the bottom of Discovery to check for damage, work on and test out the robotic arm on Discovery, and do quite of bit of scheduled work and expansion on the International Space Station. The Discovery and ISS crew have a limited amount of work left to do, as the transfers will stop on Friday, and Discovery will undock on Sat. With the results of one of the space walks, NASA officials were able to clear Discovery for a safe return. The issue that had people worried was a piece of gap filler that was sticking out of the shuttle’s heat shield. Similar to the problem that Discovery had after take off last year in shuttle mission STS-114, and the apparent cause of the Columbia tragedy four years ago. Last year mission specialist Soichi Noguchi removed the piece of filler on a special space walk. NASA has said that that will not be necessary this time. The mission of STS-121 has been an overall success so far.