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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is taking a nearby look at whatever alteration to the black energy tiles on the belly of expanse shuttle Endeavour.

The gouges and nicks were patterned in photos condemned right before Endeavour cropped with the International Space Station on Wednesday. The shuttle did a slow backflip so expanse send cameras could getting whatever signs of start damage.

NASA authorised LeRoy Cain says there's no drive for concern. He says they module move to assess the damage. If needed, the astronauts module use a godsend to make a fireman scrutiny this weekend.

The expanse agency has patterned for alteration to the shuttle's delicate heat shield ever since the 2003 river disaster. A slab of render tank foam knocked a hole in Columbia's aerofoil which led to its conclusion during re-entry.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back presently for further information. AP's early story is below.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A mammoth cosmic treat device arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday, a $2 billion research that module see the invisible aggregation and support explain how everything came to be.

It's the most pricey load ever carried by a expanse shuttle and nearly didn't make it to itinerary before the fleet retires this summer. It was launched this week aboard Endeavour on the second-to-last flight.

Two astronaut teams were appointed to confiscate the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the outside of the expanse send on Thursday, using a pair of mechanism arms, where it module meet for the chronicle of the outpost.

The scientists on Endeavour's crew said it module justify the scientific purpose of expanse station.

"It's in the same taste of importance as Hubble (Space Telescope)," astronaut Pope Chamitoff said before the flight. "And it is feat to be by farther the biggest, most pricey and perhaps the most essentially priceless noesis equipment we hit on the expanse station."

Physicist Phil Schewe said the research is part of a centuries-long practice of scientists exploring the building blocks of matter, from elements to atoms to subatomic particles.

"This is meet a noble spreading of disagreeable to respond the question, ground we hit concern and what it is," said Schewe, a spokesman for the American Institute of Physics.

"Is this a bounteous deal? Especially if they encounter something, yes it is."

The 7-ton instrument, known by its acronym AMS, has been 17 eld in the making, and involves 600 scientists from 16 countries. The hunch of the research is a magnet anulus 3 feet across.

The made-in-China magnet module curve the line of live cosmic particles as they pass finished octad detectors, enabling scientists to refer their properties.

Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting, the aggroup leader, said the greatest brainstorm haw substantially be what he and others aren't anticipating. On Wednesday, he said he was excited but not nervous.

"It's a taste too New to think most that now," Ting said from NASA's President Space Center in Houston.

The research is "going to look at whatever base questions ... that would be important in our overall discernment of the makeup of the aggregation and whatever of its base characteristics," said Hooman Davoudiasl, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

One discourse is ground the aggregation is dominated by concern kinda than distribution the stage with so-called "antimatter." While concern is made up of old particles like protons and electrons, antimatter is a assemblage of particles that are same except for carrying the oppositeness charge. Standard theories hit trouble explaining ground concern is so dominant, Davoudiasl said. By studying cosmic rays, the spectroscope can support determine whether the aggregation actually has significant sources of antimatter. he said.

Another key discourse is how to explain so-called "dark matter," which is more mediocre in the aggregation than the mediocre concern we're old with, he said. The research haw shed whatever reddened on what this mysterious clog is and how it behaves, he said.

The spectroscope nearly didn't intend into space. Ting and his aggroup won approval to put it on the expanse send and it was assembled at the dweller Organization for Nuclear Research work nearby Geneva.

But in the consequence of the 2003 river tragedy and the 2004 declaration of the shuttles' retirement, whatever flights were canceled and load expanse on the remaining missions filled up quickly. NASA was doubtful there would be shack for the super detector.

Ting never gave up. Now 75, he was dropped in Newmarket but upraised in China, and returned to the United States to acquire every his degrees. He was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1976 at geezerhood 40.

Launching the spectroscope on an unmanned rocket wasn't an option, Ting said, because of the enormous cost of the rocket and providing solar noesis to what would be a free-flying satellite.

A shuttle grace finally was additional for the spectrometer. But when the period of the expanse send was extended last year to at least 2020, the aggroup swapped out a three-year magnet for one that could operate forever. The switch suspended the shuttle assignment by months.

Endeavour — making its test travelling and the next-to-last grace of NASA's shuttle era — arrived at the expanse send Wednesday. Commander Mark Kelly, the husband of injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, expertly steered the shuttle in for the 220-mile-high linkup.

The docking, though, was overshadowed by the continuing Kelly-Giffords saga, with the regular grace director's programme word dominated by questions most the Arizona congresswoman. Giffords was ordered to receive a plastic skull pass during surgery in Houston on Wednesday, digit days after witnessing her husband's launch. She was shot in the nous on Jan. 8 at a semipolitical circumstance in Tucson, Ariz., her hometown.

Lead grace director Gary Horlacher said Kelly performed "unbelievably" substantially during the fastening and noted that no one would undergo every he's been finished in past months.

"I undergo folks are category of convergent on Mark and his situation," he told reporters. "But AMS is feat to be around talking to us for a long, daylong time. So I'm rattling such looking forward to the results over the years."

Ting, a deliberate, soft-spoken physicist at the Colony Institute of Technology, said recently that he wasn't concerned that the tending was on Kelly and Giffords, kinda than the spectrometer.

"All success or failure depends on what physics we find. That's the exclusive thing that's important," he said.

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Science illustrator Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer: http://www.ams02.org/

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