NASA finds minor scratch damage to shuttle shield

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis apparently was hit by a piece of debris that nicked part of its heat shield but the damage appeared very minor, NASA said on Tuesday.

Atlantis and its seven-member crew blasted off from Florida on Monday on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

It will be the U.S. space agency's last chance to tinker with the the telescope -- which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe -- before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010.

NASA told the Atlantis crew additional inspections might be needed of the area where the ship's right wing joins the fuselage around where the debris hit. But agency officials said later that a detailed inspection was unlikely.

Early analysis of images relayed by the crew revealed a scratch about 21 inches (53 cm) long across four heat-resistant ceramic tiles.

"It looks like something just kind of chattered its way down along that edge," deputy shuttle program manager LeRoy Cain said at a briefing, showing a picture of unidentified debris that hit the ship 104 seconds after liftoff. "This is not something we're very concerned about."

SHALLOW SCRATCH

NASA was trying to establish exactly what had caused the scratch, but it is "relatively shallow" and is not in a critical area that would endanger the ship during the extreme heat of reentry, Cain said.