Shuttle Crew Honors Columbia

Discovery Astronauts Pay Tribute To Colleagues; New Repair Concerns

(CBS/AP)  "We were watching with anticipation and excitement," Collins said of the spacewalk. "When I saw Steve pull the gap filler out, I started clapping and we were cheering in the flight deck."

Robinson told the AP that he was careful to make sure his body and none of his tools contacted the shuttle's fragile belly during the task.

"I had my hand out and I had that purposely out there sort of as potential bumper," he said. "If I was going to hit anything on the orbiter, I wanted it to be my fingers in a springy position."

Hale said tile fillers, like the ones removed Wednesday, have probably protruded on previous flights, but this time the agency spotted them and was able to repair them because of the new inspection techniques put in place after Columbia.

Robinson was barely back inside the shuttle and out of his spacesuit Wednesday when Mission Control informed the crew about the chance of another spacewalk to deal with the torn thermal blanket.

The concern is that a roughly 1-foot section of the blanket could rip away during re-entry, whip backward and slam into the shuttle, perhaps causing grave damage. Engineers expected to know by late Thursday whether the danger is real and whether any blanket trimming is required.

"I think in the old days we would not have worried about this nearly so much," Hale said. "I am very hopeful that we will be able to put this issue at rest."

Also Thursday, astronauts finished up their testing of new repair techniques.

They demonstrated a proposed repair method for small holes in the carbon panels that line the shuttle's wings. That repair technique, tested in Discovery's mid-deck on samples brought to space, was the last of three techniques set to be tested on orbit by Discovery's crew.

Astronaut James Kelly told Mission Control the astronauts got 40 minutes of video from the experiment, which he called a success.

Perhaps Wednesday's successful spacewalk also encourages the astronauts. Although this was the first time an astronaut has ventured beneath the ship, CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood called the emergency repair job "a piece of cake."

"All the talk over the past couple days about this risky this how it's never been done before … well, it's never been done before, but he sure made it look easy," Harwood told The Early Show.