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WASHINGTON, Aug 26: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) self-protective culture and its reluctance to tackle safety problems head-on contributed to the fatal breakup of US shuttle Columbia, just as technical factors tore the ship apart, according to a report prepared by independent investigators that was released on Tuesday.
“In our view, the NASA organizational culture has as much to do with the accident as the foam,” said the report.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, set up after the Feb 1 tragedy that killed seven astronauts, said in its final report that NASA needs to set up separate safety agencies that will be able to get the attention of top space officials when things go wrong.
Board Chairman Harold Gehman stressed at a briefing that the space shuttle fleet is not inherently unsafe, and praised NASA as an “outstanding organization”.
However, he said NASA needs to change how it monitors safety if the grounded shuttle fleet is to fly again, and must keep up safety standards over time, instead of growing complacent as it has in the past.
“There will be so much vigilance and so much zeal and attention to detail for the next half-dozen flights,” Gehman said. “The natural tendency of all bureaucracies to morph and migrate away from that diligent attitude is a great concern to the board, because the history of NASA indicates that they’ve done it before.”
The board found that NASA engineers raised questions soon after Columbia’s launch on Jan 16 about a piece of foam insulation that was seen falling from the ship’s massive external tank about 81 seconds after liftoff.
Engineers asked three times during the 16-day mission for satellite images of Columbia in orbit to see if the foam struck and damaged the ship, but such images were never obtained.
The board’s report said NASA officials missed eight opportunities to address concerns about the falling foam, which was ultimately found to be the accident’s immediate cause.
‘LACK OF CONCERN’: “From the beginning, the board witnessed a consistent lack of concern about the debris strike on Columbia,” the report said. “NASA managers told the board, ‘there was no safety-of-flight issue,’ and ‘we couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.’”
The report drew parallels between NASA management problems now and at the time of the 1986 Challenger disaster, which also killed seven astronauts.
Board members agreed early on that the foam hit the heat-shielding leading edge of the left wing, causing a breach that allowed superheated gas to invade the ship on re-entry and led to its disintegration over Texas.
After seven months of work at a cost of about 20 million dollars, the 248-page report recommended wholesale changes in how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration does business, including the creation of a technical engineering authority funded directly from the agency’s headquarters to monitor safety outside the constraints of individual programme pressures.
The other three shuttles in the US fleet were grounded after Columbia disintegrated, and NASA chief Sean O’Keefe and others have estimated that next March or April is the soonest that the fleet can return to flight.
No shuttles flew for 32 months after the 1986 shuttle Challenger disaster, in which seven astronauts died.
But now, the shuttles are an integral part of the construction of the International Space Station, an orbiting outpost involving 16 nations.
The Columbia board also urged NASA to take high-resolution pictures of the external fuel tank after it separates from the shuttle and determine the structural integrity of the heat-shielding material damaged by the foam strike before shuttles fly again.—Reuters
