Spy satellites to monitor shuttle liftoff

CAPE KENNEDY, Fla., July 11 (UPI) -- The shuttle Discovery will be closely monitored during its launch, but officials say it might take days afterward to complete a safety report.

NASA will use an unprecedented number of cameras and sensors to monitor the spacecraft during its flight to the international space station on the first such mission -- set for Wednesday -- since the Columbia disaster.

But determining whether the spacecraft suffers the type of external damage that caused Columbia's breakup more than two years ago will take at least four days, Wayne Hale, chairman of NASA's mission management team, told the Houston Chronicle.

"Everyone's reaction is, you have all these cameras, then ... 15 minutes after launch you ought to be able to tell us what the story is," Hale told the newspaper. But he said it would take several days to evaluate the imagery and sensor readings before determining the ship's fitness to return to Earth.

The Columbia disaster was caused by originally undetected damage caused when fuel-tank insulating foam struck its left wing during liftoff.

Along with the cameras and sensors, an unspecified number of secret military spy satellites, ground-based telescopes, radar systems and reconnaissance aircraft will also monitor the launch, the Chronicle reported.