During the launch, a batter of cameras trained on the shuttle captured a few debris falling of - one of which is believed to be a tile which is believed to have come from near a door covering the nose landing gear.  Initial estimates put the tile to be about 1.5 inches in size.  However, according to NASA officials, there is really nothing to worry about.  NASA’s flight operations manager, John Shannon, said it was too soon to determine the source of the debris, how large any possible defect might be and whether it poses any safety threat for the spacecraft.

"We did not come into this flight expecting to eliminate" all falling debris, he said at an evening news briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "But we knew that we had the tools available to us to characterize it."

In addition to the possible piece of tile, video showed a piece of debris falling from the external fuel tank as it separated from the orbiter.  The piece however, did not strike the shuttle.

The recent launch of space shuttle Discovery is NASA’s 114th space shuttle launch and it went on schedule at 10:39am ET July 27.  The launch followed days of troubleshooting to fix a faulty fuel sensor in Discovery’s external tank that led to cancellation of a launch July 13.

Now that the space shuttle is in space, let us all hope and pray that it comes home safely.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this very very special event.

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