NASA Chief Vows Rigorous Checks for Future Flights
Jun. 12–WASHINGTON–Sobered by test results indicating a tiny crack on Columbia’s wing may have been the only visible evidence that the shuttle was doomed, NASA’s chief said Wednesday the space agency would take extreme measures to inspect spacecraft in orbit, including launching only in daylight and conducting more spacewalks.
“This poses significant challenges” in returning the remaining shuttles to flight, Administrator Sean O’Keefe said Wednesday. “We’ve got to erect an inspection regime for future flights that is extremely meticulous.”
And O’Keefe, who so far has resisted lawmakers’ calls to seek an increase in NASA’s $15.5 billion budget in the wake of the Columbia disaster, conceded that his agency will need more funding and more personnel.
How much more money will be required is not yet clear, he said, but he added that President Bush has given him no indication that such a request would be unwelcome. “It will cost what it costs,” O’Keefe said.
The administrator’s comments came on the eve of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s first public hearing in Washington and just days after investigators in San Antonio tried to simulate what happened during Columbia’s liftoff Jan. 16, when breakaway insulation foam from the shuttle’s external tank struck the orbiter’s left wing.
Preliminary results of the tests showed a 6-inch crack on the interior of the test wing’s leading edge and a 3/4-inch crack that was barely visible on the outside of the wing when a piece of foam was fired into it.
The simulation bolstered the board’s working theory that the foam strike triggered a chain of events that led to Columbia’s disintegration. The Feb. 1 accident, which occurred as the shuttle was heading home, killed the seven astronauts aboard.
“This really sobers me up — to say, goodness gracious, when you’re in an atmosphere where you have gone the most rigorous way you can possibly think of and yet this thing failed,” O’Keefe said. “Nonetheless, we’re going to try, and try really hard” to avoid similar problems in the future.
To ensure that NASA fully complies with the board’s final recommendations, which are expected by early August, O’Keefe named a “Return to Flight Task Group.” The panel will oversee NASA’s internal return-to-flight team and provide a “sanity check” on its work.
The 20-member group, headed by two former astronauts — an Apollo veteran, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford, and the first astronaut to pilot a shuttle after the 1986 Challenger accident, Richard Covey — will verify when NASA is ready to fly again, O’Keefe said.
“O’Keefe said only he and the space agency should be held accountable for the eventual decision to launch and any consequences that arise.
O’Keefe said that, according to last week’s test results, a person would have to put his face two to three inches away from the damaged area of the shuttle to see it.
He declined to comment on whether such a small crack on Columbia might have been detected if NASA had requested the use of the nation’s spy satellites and ground-based telescopes to inspect the shuttle in orbit. Such a request never was made.
NASA is exploring whether astronauts may be tasked with conducting in-flight inspections of the shuttle’s exterior on future missions, O’Keefe said, and the agency is considering adding repair kits to the remaining shuttles and outfitting them with exterior hand- and foot-holds to help astronauts look underneath the craft.
Changes also will have to be made on the ground, he said, requiring more funding and more inspectors, who would be more independent from the shuttle team and empowered to critically assess shuttles between flights.
O’Keefe said all launches in the foreseeable future will be during daylight hours to allow NASA engineers to monitor the liftoff with numerous cameras.
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