Cape Canaveral, Fla., August 16, 2007 -  After nearly a week of agonizing over a deep gouge on Endeavour's belly, NASA was close to completing tests yesterday and deciding whether to order risky spacewalk repairs.

One of the astronauts who would attempt those repairs, Rick Mastracchio, had to cut his latest spacewalk short yesterday after he noticed a hole in his left glove, as per AP.

The long rip in the thumb penetrated only the two outer layers of the five-layer glove, and he was never in any danger, Mission Control said.

Earlier in the day, Mission Control informed the astronauts they may have to wait until today for a decision on possible repairs.

The unprecedented patching job, if approved, would be performed on the next spacewalk, currently scheduled for tomorrow but most likely to be delayed until Saturday to give engineers more time to analyze the situation. That could keep Endeavour and its crew of seven, including teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, at the space station at least an extra day.

Preliminary results indicated no need for fixing the gouge, but mission managers were withholding judgment until completing heat-blasting tests on the ground.

The 3.5-inch-long, 2-inch-wide gouge, the result of a debris strike at liftoff, is in two of the thousands of black tiles that guard Endeavour against the 2,000-plus temperatures of atmospheric reentry. Part of the gouge, a narrow 1-inch strip, cuts all the way through the tiles, exposing the felt fabric that serves as the final thermal barrier to the ship's aluminum frame.

The exposed area -- and the gouge itself -- are so small that National Aeronautics and Space Administration is not worried about a Columbia-type catastrophe at flight's end. Rather, the concern is that if too much heat enters the crevice, the underlying aluminum structure might be damaged enough to warrant lengthy postflight repairs. That, in turn, could lead to launch delays and disrupt space station construction.

NASA does not want the aluminum under the gouge to get hotter than 350 degrees. As of Tuesday, computer models put the maximum exposure at 325 degrees.