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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Endeavour's astronauts have inspected their ship's thermal skin for any possible damage from orbital debris using a laser-tipped boom.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO

Big blue: In this image provided by NASA, astronaut Rick Linnehan, anchored to a Canadarm2 mobile foot restraint, participates in extravehicular activity. Astronauts are checking the shuttle’s thermal skin for possible damage from debris.

It comes as another problem surfaced with the space station's new Canadian-built robot.

The slow and meticulous thermal tile survey normally is conducted after a space shuttle leaves the space station, but this time, it was done with the shuttle still docked. That's because the 15-metre inspection boom will be left behind for the next shuttle crew.

There won't be room in Discovery's payload bay for an inspection boom in May as Japan's enormous Kibo lab will take up almost every square centimetre. Two astronauts will attach the boom to the outside of the space station Saturday night during the fifth and final spacewalk of the shuttle mission.

Engineers, meanwhile, were trying to figure how to deal with a problem with Dextre, the space station's new Canadian-built robot. A shoulder joint was not responding properly after being moved in preparation for Thursday night's spacewalk.

Flight director Ginger Kerrick said the Canadian Space Agency - which supplied the US$200 million-plus robot - cannot perform a diagnostic test until a computer error message is cleared. Engineers are considering a software patch.

Endeavour's astronauts put Dextre together during the first half of their 16-day mission and also attached the first piece of Japan's Kibo lab, a storage compartment.

Shortly after reaching orbit last week, the astronauts hooked up the boom to Endeavour's 15-metre-foot robot arm to check the wings and nose for any launch damage. None was found. They repeated the inspection Friday in the remote chance the wings or nose took a micrometeorite or space junk hit during the past 1 1/2 weeks.

NASA was still glowing over the success of Thursday night's thermal tile repair test. Two spacewalking astronauts used a high-tech caulk gun to squirt goo into the holes of deliberately damaged shuttle tile samples. The material reacted much like engineers expected. Bubbles formed in the putty and caused it to expand, but not too much.

Once back on Earth, the tile samples will be subjected to more than 1,100 degrees Celsius to mimic the heat of re-entry, then dissected and analyzed.

It was the last safety-related space demonstration stemming from the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Saturday night's spacewalk will wrap up their space station work and clear the way for an undocking on Monday night. It will be the most spacewalks ever performed during a joint shuttle-station flight.