 Many missions can an orbiter window withstand. That's a determination that must be made at the end of each flight. In order to determine the flight worthiness of the six thermal orbiter windows, each one must first be laboriously hand cleaned. A haze bakes onto the surfaces in the 4000 degree heat of reentry. The cleaning process takes approximately a week of labor, and only after the haze is removed can visual inspection begin. Small-scale debris impacts on orbit and booster separation exhaust result in damage to the windows. A mylar is made for flight-to-flight comparisons. The new defects are evaluated using an epoxy mold impression. Any crater depth exceeding 0.006 of an inch results in a window replacement. A new inspection system has been developed by the INET Special Instrumentation Laboratory at KSC. A lightweight scanning frame automates the sidelight optical scattering method and shows defects in the presence of haze. This automated optical technique can be performed prior to polishing the windows, and it provides a permanent and accurate recording of the results. A computer image can be printed onto a mylar and archived in a database for detailed flight-to-flight analysis. The second phase of the automated inspection employs a high resolution camera system to determine a maximum depth extent of the damage features. By adapting technologies already in use in shuttle and payloads defect analysis at KSC, this automated inspection technique provides more accurate data sooner.