Discovery: esperanzas y temores

The space shuttle Discovery is orbiting the Earth after blasting off successfully from Cape Canaveral. However there are growing worries about something which was seen falling from the spacecraft soon after the launch.

This report from Jeremy Cooke:

Immediately after Discovery's lift-off NASA officials were in jubilant mood, talking of the power and majesty of the launch and of the mutual congratulations and back-slapping at ground control.

But even as the shuttle's commander, Eileen Collins, was reporting from space that this was the smoothest of her four flights into orbit, engineers at Mission Control were trying to assess the significance of an onboard video which apparently shows debris falling from Discovery soon after it cleared the tower.

Fresh in everyone's mind here of course is the Columbia disaster of 2003 when heat-resistant tiles became damaged during the launch.

The result was a catastrophic failure on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere two weeks later, with the loss of all seven astronauts on board.

It seems clear that NASA genuinely doesn't know the seriousness of any problem it may face on this current mission. It may take days to assess any damage.

But the hope here at Cape Canaveral continues to be that this mission will salvage the agency's battered reputation and help open the way for a continuation of the space programme and eventually a manned flight to Mars.

lift-off
expresión utilizada para referirse al despegue de una nave

in jubilant mood
extremadamente feliz

mutual congratulations
Felicitaciones mutuas entre dos o más personas

back-slapping
se utiliza para felicitar a una persona, de modo literal o metafórico

to assess the significance of
Descubrir la importancia de algo

an onboard video
un grabación de video desde el interior de la nave, no desde la Tierra

debris
Piezas de algo destruido a raíz de un accidente o una explosión

Fresh in everyone's mind
Algo que es recordado claramente por todos

a catastrophic failure
Una falla catastrófica

salvage the agency's battered reputation
Mejorar la dañada reputación de la NASA