The six astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavor have overnight conducted the first heat shield inspection of the STS-130 mission. The spacecraft is currently on its way to the International Space Station (ISS), where it's due to arrive tomorrow, February 10, at 12:09 am EST (05:09 GMT). According to officials at NASA, preliminary videos have revealed that there is nothing wrong with the heat shield, and that a piece of debris, which came loose from the external fuel tanks during launch appeared to have missed the orbiter, Space reports.

However, these results do not eliminate the need for a full inspection. The crew woke up at 6:14 pm EST (23:14 GMT) yesterday, and began working with the sensor-laden pole that helps them conduct the investigation at around 10:54 pm EST (03:54 GMT). Because of the time Endeavor launched at, the astronauts aboard need to adopt a routine where they sleep during the day and work during the night. The pole used for the five-hour task is filled with sensors and cameras that will relay back data to Mission Control. Experts will analyze the images thoroughly over the coming days, and will then determine if a special course of action needs to be taken.

In addition to this inspection, two more others are scheduled, as a regular part of the missions flying shuttles to the ISS. Expedition 22 crew members aboard the orbital facility will also snap photos of Endeavor's underside as the spacecraft performs the rollover pitch maneuver when it approaches its docking berth, on the Unity module. A third heat shield survey will be conducted in the penultimate day of flight, after ISS separation. These are all necessary precautions, NASA experts say, as their absence played a role in the disaster that saw shuttle Columbia burning up during atmospheric reentry in 2003.

“Flight Day 2 inspection is a highly choreographed set of maneuvers with the space shuttle's robot arm holding a long boom and tracing backwards and forwards along the leading edges of each wing. It requires a fair amount of diligence because although the robot arm is being flown by the computer, you have to monitor it carefully enough that you could take over and stop it with a few seconds' notice in case it goes astray because, of course, the thermal protection system that we're inspecting is very fragile and we don't think it would withstand a blow from the robot arm,” explained in a preflight interview Nick Patrick, an STS-130 mission specialist flying aboard Endeavor.