Last saturday, NASA's STS-117 mission involving the Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to earth successfully, bringing home the record-breaking Sunita Williams and six other astronauts. A section of the
thermal blanket, which protects part of the shuttle from the blazing heat of re-entry, had peeled back from its left engine pod mount during the launch, rekindling the memories of Columbia disaster.
Space walker Danny Olivas secured the torn blanket with medical staples and pins. An initial inspection found a slight gap between the blanket and the surrounding
heat tiles after landing, but the anchor pins were still in place.
Hats off to Danny Olivas and the NASA.
But who ensured that the pins wouldn't give way?
Here they are;
Whatever we do, let's do it with dedication and devotion as these little ones demonstrate :-)
3 comments:
That's a gr8 picture and am sure itz coz of all these prayers that they all returned home safely! These repeated thermal protection failures do put a question mark on the shuttle program's efficiency and the need to find a proper replacement!
With a whole nation crossing its fingers for her, things just couldnt go wrong...
it reminds me of a story i learnt in english classes - i guess in 8th or 9th - A guy called Dutta (?) from calcutta discovering a comet which supposedly was to crash onto earth... and the crash was presumable averted due to prayers and pooja conducted by the guys wife :-)
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