John Schwartz at the NYT files this report about a new safety debate around NASA's plans to return the space shuttle to orbit this spring.
There is widespread agreement that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, prodded by a searing report from the expert panel that investigated the loss of the Columbia two years ago, has made the fleet safer, and the agency is moving full speed toward launching as early as May. But critics, citing internal agency documents and NASA's own acknowledgment that it has not made all the improvements it committed to, contend that the agency is rushing back to the unforgiving environment of space with too much of the job left undone.
The Columbia broke up over Texas as it returned to earth on the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, killing the seven astronauts onboard. A hole punched in the leading edge of the left wing by an errant piece of insulating foam 82 seconds after liftoff, 16 days earlier, had let superheated gas into the wing during re-entry.
The independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster recommended short-term goals that included preventing foam damage and inspecting and repairing shuttles in orbit. For the long term, the board recommended measures to fix the "broken safety culture" that it said had led to the disaster. The 15 return-to-flight recommendations, the report said, represented "the minimum that must be done to essentially fix the problems that were identified by this accident."
