NASA tries to find out the cause of the loss of the Columbia

As NASA races toward returning the shuttle fleet to space, some current and former employees are questioning how serious the space agency is about fixing the "broken safety culture" that investigators have described as a major cause of the loss of the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/accidents/2003/02/03/42911.html ' target=_blank>Columbia and its crew two years ago. "The culture has not changed at NASA," said James Wetherbee, a former shuttle commander who recently served as a leading safety official at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "I don't know how many times we have to have an accident to learn these lessons." Before Wetherbee retired in January, he headed the shuttle side of the center's Independent Technical Authority, an organization created at the recommendation of the panel investigating the Columbia for dealing with technical and safety issues, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Mr. Marder is a materials science and engineering professor, and he was working on the massive crawler, which contains the space shuttle to the launch pad. Mr. Marder served to design new treads for the slow-moving vehicle. In due course of the project, he learned that NASA was going to distribute parts of the destroyed Columbia space shuttle to universities to study what caused it to explode upon re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, over Texas. NASA's Columbia &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=10819 ' target=_blank>space shuttle and its crew were lost during re-entry on February 1, 2003, when damage incurred during launch caused the orbiter to break up over Texas. Since then, the agency's three remaining orbiters have been grounded. Discovery, NASA's first shuttle to launch since Columbia's loss, is currently slated to lift off no earlier than May 15 of this year. The orbiter will carry NASA's STS-114 mission, commanded by veteran astronaut Eileen Collins, to test new tools and procedures for shuttle safety, as well deliver much needed supplies to the ISS, informs the Express News Line. NR

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