HOUSTON -- Five weeks before NASA wants to return the space shuttle to orbit, the agency has not yet completed some major tasks that are prerequisites for launching the spacecraft, an independent oversight panel said Wednesday.
NASA hasn't finished analyzing how much debris might fall off the shuttle's fuel tank and hit the fragile ship, members of the panel said. Nor has the agency nailed down its estimates of how much damage such a debris strike could do. And a recommendation that NASA develop a way to fix damage to the shuttle in orbit has generated so much controversy among panel members that they broke into argument at a public meeting Wednesday.

"We're getting down to the hard ones now," said Joseph Cuzzupoli, a member of the Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group, which is monitoring NASA's efforts. "They need to be resolved before we fly."

NASA hopes to launch the shuttle Discovery between July 13 and July 31. The shuttles have been grounded since Columbia disintegrated in February 2003, killing the crew of seven.

After the Columbia accident, investigators drew up a list of 15 steps NASA needed to take before flying the shuttle again. NASA's chief at the time, Sean O'Keefe, vowed to "embrace" the recommendations. He set up the task group to monitor NASA's compliance.

In the 21 months since then, NASA has met 12 of the 15 recommendations, the task group said Wednesday.

But the three remaining are among the most difficult to polish off.

Panelists disagree sharply on how advanced repair techniques should be, making it "quite possible" that some members will issue a dissenting final report, panel co-chair Richard Covey said.

NASA won't have its meeting on how much debris falls off the fuel tank until June 24, less than three weeks before the opening of the July launch window.

It is unclear how much weight the panelists' opinion carries. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has said that he does not consider it mandatory to get the task group's go-ahead to fly the shuttle.







Publication date: 2005-06-09