Astronaut repairs heat shield

Published August 4, 2005

HOUSTON, Aug 3: Spacewalking astronaut Steve Robinson plucked a couple of loose fibre strips from Discovery’s belly on Wednesday in an unprecedented repair to the shuttle’s heat shield. “I’m grasping it and I’m pulling it and it’s coming out very easily. Beautiful. Nice,” Robinson radioed as he pulled the material from between the heat resistant tiles on the shuttle’s underside. “It looks like this big patient is cured.”—Reuters

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