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Discovery docked at the international space station Thursday after performing an unprecedented back flip to allow those aboard the outpost to photograph the shuttle's belly for signs of damage.

“Everything that we see at this point says that the orbiter is in fact a clean bird,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told ABC's “Good Morning America” after the somersault.

Discovery was just 183 metres beneath the station when Commander Eileen Collins manually steered the shuttle's nose upward and slowly flipped the spacecraft over. Ms. Collins then began repositioning the vehicle for docking.

“We're looking forward to seeing you guys,” she told station Commander Sergei Krikalev when the shuttle was a little more than 1.5 kilometres from the station. “Your space station looks absolutely beautiful from the outside.”

The manoeuvre came after a huge setback Wednesday, when NASA decided to ground future shuttle flights because a chunk of insulating foam flew off Discovery's fuel tank during liftoff – as it did in Columbia's doomed mission. This time, the foam apparently missed the spacecraft.

Discovery was the first shuttle to go to orbit in the 2½ years since Columbia broke apart over Texas as it returned to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003. All seven astronauts aboard died.

The space agency believed it had solved problems associated with the foam on the external fuel tank, but learned Wednesday that it was wrong. The foam prevents the formation of ice on the fuel tank.

“We have got to go take a look at this, and we have got to go find a solution to this problem. And we will,” shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said.

The shuttle's docking would be the first time a shuttle has hitched to the station in almost three years. A crew last visited the outpost in November, 2002.

Discovery comes loaded with 15 tonnes of much-needed supplies, including a replacement gyroscope for one that failed in March. Gyroscopes help steer the station.

Mr. Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut, and astronaut John Phillips used two digital cameras – one with a 400 millimetre lens and another with an 800 mm lens – to snap 100 seconds worth of photos of the shuttle as it flipped backward, exposing its thermal tile belly. The photographs were expected to provide resolution similar to a person standing within a few centimetres of the shuttle's tiles.

The digital photos, to be downloaded after docking, are what NASA officials said they are most interested in. A team of special analysts at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will examine them for any indications of damage.

In addition to the chunk of foam that broke from Discovery's external fuel tank during launch, several smaller pieces broke away as well. A thermal tile on Discovery's belly was also damaged soon after liftoff.

One tile near the doors for Discovery's landing gear – a particularly vulnerable spot – lost a 38-millimetre piece that had been repaired before the flight.

Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said none of the tile damage looked serious and probably will not require the use of untested repair techniques in orbit designed after Columbia.

“We don't really have a mechanism for knowing why a part of that tile came off,” Hale said.

A planned inspection of Discovery's wings and nose using a new 15-metre, laser-tipped extension to the shuttle's robotic arm turned up nothing alarming, he said.

Aalysis will continue for the next four to five days.

Mr. Hale and Mr. Parsons said that, despite attention to the agency's decision to ground future missions, NASA's focus remains on Discovery's mission and bringing its crew home at the end of its 12-day mission.