Good news for future shuttle flight schedule.

NASA engineers think they have found the cause of and a remedy for foam falling from brackets on the space shuttle fuel tank like that which recently damaged the Endeavour heat shield tiles, agency officials said Friday.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., manager of the shuttle program, said in a telephone news conference that X-ray tests of brackets that hold fuel lines on the next external propellant tank set to fly indicated microscopic cracks in a thin layer of foam atop the metal brackets.

Cracks in this special heat-resistant foam material, which is less than a half-inch thick, can lead to the lighter insulating foam above it coming off during the stresses of launching, Mr. Hale said.

“The fact that we were able to identify the most likely cause with a simple test, X-raying the fittings, was heartening,” he said.