HOUSTON: NASA was assessing damage found Tuesday on the underside of the shuttle Atlantis, but downplayed any threat to the astronauts or their mission as the craft raced toward a risky high-orbit rendezvous with the Hubble telescope.During a marathon 10-hour survey of fragile heat shielding, the seven member Atlantis crew found a string of gouges stretching 53 centimeters (21 inches) across four heatshield tiles on the underside of the forward portion of the shuttle's right wing sustained during the craft's launch into orbit.The US space agency characterized the damage, which will undergo at least two days of evaluation by imagery experts in Mission Control, as minor.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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