Endeavour Mission Hit by Apparent Shuttle Damage

I have continualy felt that NASA has placed more concern on keeping flights of the shuttles going forward than on crew safety. Hopefully, this "gouge" in the heat protective tiles will not lead to another disaster. Here's highlights from RawStory:

NASA said it has detected an apparent gouge on shuttle Endeavour's heat shield during a routine inspection Friday, after the orbiter docked with the International Space Station (ISS). A piece of ice struck the shuttle shortly after Wednesday's liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, leaving what appears to be a three square inch (19 square centimeter) gouge near the hatch of one of the shuttle's landing gears, a NASA official said.

Mission manager John Shannon told a news conference that NASA was trying to determine the extent of the apparent damage. "What this means, I don't know at this point," he said. The possible damage was detected Friday after ISS crew members took 296 pictures of the shuttle's underside while it performed a backflip during its approach to the station. The pictures were analyzed by NASA experts on Earth. Astronauts on Sunday will use a camera attached to a robotic arm to closely inspect the area of concern, Shannon said.

The mission comes amid a spate of scandals that have plagued the National Aeronautics and Space Administration this year, from the arrest of an astronaut on charges of attempted kidnapping to reports of astronauts drinking on the job. As Endeavour headed towards the orbiting laboratory hundreds of miles above the Earth, NASA chief Michael Griffin Wednesday moved to tackle troubling reports of drunken astronauts in the run-up to the mission.