Space Shuttle Endeavour has Bumpy Liftoff

The launch, which took place at Cape Canaveral at 6:03 PM EDT, was not entirely smooth. Less than two minutes after the shuttle was launched, eight or nine pieces of foam insulation from the external fuel tank broke off and hit the Endeavour at least twice, in the area where the right wing connects with the fuselage.

Bill Gerstenmaier, space operations chief for NASA, says that marks on the tiles that were seen probably only indicate damage to the shuttle's coating.

On Thursday afternoon, the astronauts will use a 100-foot laser-tipped boom to conduct an inspection of the Endeavour's thermal shielding. This has been a standard procedure on all shuttle flights since the Columbia accident. In 2003, foam broke of off the space shuttle Columbia during lift off and created a hole in the wing, which ultimately caused the shuttle to blow up during re-entry.

On Friday, residents of the ISS will take zoom photographs of the space shuttle before it docks. Any other damage should show up in the photos.

If the Endeavour is damaged irreparably, the astronauts could stay in the ISS until they were rescued by another shuttle in two to three months.

The launch took place on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11 mission, the first manned Moon mission. With the Endeavour flight, astronauts Doug Hurley and Chris Cassidy became, respectively, the 499th and 500th person to travel in space. Hurley and Cassidy are part of a 7 person shuttle crew. When they reach the ISS, they will join 6 people already living there. The 13 people in total on the ISS will constitute the largest gathering in space so far.