Accidents effecting the shuttle:(

NASA investigating shuttle processing incidents
NASA is launching an investigation into three shuttle processing
accidents in the past week, two of which caused damage to
billion-dollar orbiters.

Technicians inadvertently dropped an x-ray film processor onto the body
flap of the orbiter Endeavour Tuesday, damaging fragile thermal tiles
that protect the ship and its astronaut crews from intense heat during
atmospheric reentry.

The technicians had been preparing to perform x-ray inspections on the
shuttle's rudder speedbrake at the time. NASA now plans additional
structural inspections of the body flap to determine the extent of the
damage.

The body flap provides thermal protection for the shuttle's three main
engines during ascent and also helps guide an orbiter during reentry
and landing.

Extra inspections also will be carried out on the robot arm of the
orbiter Discovery, which is being readied for launch around May 10 on
NASA's second post-Columbia test flight.

A bridge bucket carrying technicians from a clean-up site in shuttle
Discovery's payload bay late Saturday inadvertently struck the
orbiter's 50-foot-long robot arm.

Marks were noted in two places on multi-layered insulation blankets
that provide thermal protection to the arm, which is mounted on
brackets along the inside of the shuttle's cargo bay.

The blankets were remmoved and two small indentations were found on the
arm's so-called outer bumper, a layer of graphite epoxy that protects
the composite carbon structure beneath.

The technicians in the bridge bucket had just finished cleaning up
shards of glass from the aft midbody area of the payload bay. A
technician performing thermal tile repair work Friday had inadvertently
bumped a heat lamp into a handrail. The lamp broke and shards of glass
fell into the payload bay.

No serious damage was apparent during any of the incidents. But the
work place accidents represent a high number of launch processing
incidents in a short span of time.+