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NASA's been catching a lot of flack for letting those heat-resistant tiles fall off on launch -- but at least they had a method in place for repairing the damage.
Mr. Noguchi and Dr. Robinson began their spacewalk at the back of the shuttle's payload bay, spending more than two hours working with damaged samples of the tiles that cover the bottom of a shuttle and the reinforced carbon-carbon material that makes up the wings' leading edges. The repair techniques were developed on recommendation from investigators of the Columbia accident two years ago, and this was the first time they could be tested in space.
...Dr. Robinson used a large caulk gun to squirt an experimental material called NOAX into cracks in the reinforced carbon samples and worked the black, doughlike material into the breaches with an assortment of putty knives.
"It seems to be well behaved," he said. "I see just a very little bit of bubbling." Engineers were concerned about bubbles forming in the material, which might keep a patch from holding.
