STS-115 Commander Brent Jett, left, looks over a checklist as astronaut Joe Tanner takes pictures from the aft flightdeck of the space shuttle Atlantis in this view from television on Sunday. The shuttle will dock with the international space station early this morning.

Orlando, Fla. ? The crew of shuttle Atlantis carefully inspected its ship’s heat shielding Sunday and also got ready for this morning’s planned arrival at the international space station.

With shuttle commander Brent Jett at the controls, Atlantis is scheduled to dock at the outpost at 5:46 a.m. CDT.

Several hours later, the astronauts face another delicate task in delivering the 17-ton truss that Atlantis is carrying in its cargo bay. The bus-sized structure is to be hoisted up by the shuttle’s robot arm and handed off to the station’s arm.

“It’s an extremely busy day,” lead flight director Paul Dye said. “There’s an awful lot going on, and it’ll be nonstop work from start to finish.”

On Sunday, the astronauts got their mission off to a good start by sailing through inspections of the shuttle’s wings and nose cap. To do so, they used lasers and a camera mounted on a 50-foot boom attached to the end of Atlantis’ robot arm.

Mission managers said the shuttle appears to be in very good shape, though foam did break off the ship’s external tank in several places during Saturday’s launch from Kennedy Space Center.

“Right now, I have high confidence in the thermal-protection system,” said John Shannon, chairman of the mission-management team.

Shannon said all the foam incidents occurred late in flight, where the atmosphere is thin and the errant pieces cannot damage the shuttle. Engineers will continue to pore through the data for any signs of problems.

The inspection is part of the post-Columbia measures NASA has taken to find – and repair, if necessary – any damage that occurs during liftoff. The Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, was caused by a piece of foam insulation that broke off the shuttle’s external tank.