The mission to remove the two pieces of protruding filler on the Discovery belly was a success: Stephen Robinson, a mechanical engineer, only needed a few seconds to pull out each dangling piece of ceramic-fiber cloth.  However, just as this issue was solved, NASA scientists were busy trying to determine whether or not something needs to be done about a thermal blanket below the commander's window. It turns out that blanket was nicked by some debris during the launch. Some air probably got into the opening and puffed up the blanket. NASA is concerned that during the shuttle re-entry into atmosphere, the blanket might come off and smack into the shuttle.

Seoul National University unveiled Snuppy, the Afghan hound - the first canine to be cloned. Snuppy, a name that draws from the university's initials, was born from a yellow Labrador retriever. He is now 13 weeks old and bears the same DNA as an older hound whose ear cells were used in the cloning.  This represents a major breakthrough in cloning and science at large because:

- Snuppy was the only survivor of 1,095 cloned embryos implanted in 123 dogs.

- The dog is physiologically very close to a human: the dog has as many as 203 genes that can be used as disease models for human being. In comparison, the same totals are just 65 for the pig and 123 for the cat.

NASA astronaut Stephen Robinson has to complete a difficult mission to remove a couple of short pieces of filler material that are sticking out of space shuttle Discovery. These emergency repairs are to mitigate NASA concerns that Discovery might overheat if it descends through the atmosphere with the material protruding.