The Eyes of the Space Shuttle

Roland Piquepaille writes "Now that Discovery astronaut Steve Robinson has successfully removed two pieces of fabric poking out of the shuttle's heat shield, a question remains: how did NASA discover these anomalies in the first place? In this article, Forbes.com writes that NASA can say thank you to a private Canadian company, Neptec, and its Laser Camera system (LCS). Neptec is working with NASA for ten years now, but it was the first time that its vision technology was used for external damage assessment of a shuttle. As NASA says it may cancel some future shuttle flights, Neptec plans to implement its 3-D imaging technology in military situations and on the battlefield. But read more for other details, references and pictures about this imaging technology."

Comments

What I really wonder is

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

NASA has flown the shuttle well over 100 times, I believe (can't be bothered to check the exact number right now). So, how comes issues with falling pieces of foam and bits sticking out of the tiles are only cropping up now? I realize the STS fleet is aging, but still, it almost sounds like they've been incredibly lucky 100 times and haven't spotted the flaws until now, which sounds quite incredible.

Anybody in the know here could explain this?