Where's Barbara?

Barbara Morgan can be forgiven if she never wants to hear these words again: “transfer” and “stowage.”

Hauling more than 5,000 pounds of cargo to and from the space station kept the teacher-turned-astronaut pretty much out sight on Saturday. The communications lines were tied up with the first spacewalk of the mission, which occupied five of Barbara’s six shuttle crewmates. That left Al Drew as Barb’s prime partner in the seemingly endless task of unpacking and putting stuff away.

She’ll return to the flight deck of the shuttle on Sunday to help out with another inspection of Endeavour’s heat shield. A bad bounce of a piece of falling foam caused some damage to one of the shuttle’s ceramic belly tiles.

Shuttles have returned with far worse damage throughout the program’s 26-year history, but NASA takes no chances since losing the Columbia crew in 2003. With cameras and other sensors to scrutinize every inch of the ship if necessary, engineers can compute detailed assessments of how hot an area may get during atmospheric re-entry and whether any repairs may be needed to ward off structural damage that could comprise the shuttle’s safety.

It’s doubtful anything will need to be done about the gouge on Endeavour’s damaged tile, says John Shannon, the deputy shuttle program manager. But Barb and her crewmate Tracy Caldwell will run the sensor boom over the damage site just to be sure.