Interesting...

This will be fun to watch:

HOUSTON -- NASA engineers are conducting a series of tests to determine how best to repair a torn heat-resistant blanket on the space shuttle Atlantis.

John Shannon, NASA's deputy shuttle program manager, said astronauts and engineers on Earth are testing repair options that range from using a medical stapler to what amounts to a spacesuit darning needle to secure the blanket swatch, which ripped free of its mount at the aft end of Atlantis during the orbiter's June 8 launch.

"They have several different solutions to put the blanket down and keep it down," Shannon told reporters here at NASA's Johnson Space Center during a mission briefing.

Wire ties and tools to pin the 4-inch by 6-inch (10-centimeter by 15-centimeter) triangular blanket flap into heat-resistant tiles nearby its location on Atlantis' left Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) pod are also among the options, said Shannon. Duct tape, it turns out, won't work in the vacuum of space, he added.

The front runner is the spacesuit needle using a stainless steel wire as thread. But a final decision is expected sometime in the next two days, during which time mission managers will also decide whether to perform the repair during the third STS-117 spacewalk set for Friday or wait until the newly added fourth excursion on Sunday, Shannon said.

While not a threat to the safe return of Atlantis' STS-117 astronaut crew, there is a risk that heat of reentering the Earth's atmosphere could damage honeycomb-like graphite-epoxy material beneath the torn blanket and require a repair after landing that could be avoided, mission managers have said.

Later this week, NASA engineers will conduct a series of wind tunnel tests and heating studies on mockups of the damaged blanket to evaluate the repair techniques...