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NASA defends shuttle decision

Russians to ferry crews and supplies to space station

By Paul Recer, Associated Press, 2/28/2003

ASHINGTON -- NASA's top official yesterday vigorously defended the way NASA dealt with a flurry of e-mails between engineers about the possible destruction of shuttle Columbia during its return to Earth. He said that specialists considered the issues and decided that the space shuttle would be safe.

Speaking before the House Science Committee, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said that engineers' dire speculations while Columbia was still in orbit were evaluated at the proper level below top management, but that the space agency would review the decision-making process.

O'Keefe also announced that Russian spacecraft will be used to exchange crew members aboard the International Space Station, because the Columbia accident forced grounding of the space shuttle fleet.

A debate among engineers on the risks Columbia faced during its reentry never reached top officials, but O'Keefe said the space agency expected lower-level specialists to evaluate risks and make decisions about operations.

''I certainly am not privy to every single one of those deliberations that go on across an agency of 18,000 people and another 100,000 folks who engage in launch operations and the continued activities of the agency,'' O'Keefe said in a heated exchange with Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York.

Weiner, who apologized at one point for getting ''hot under the collar,'' said it was stunning that serious safety concerns were never shared with NASA's top management. He said that it should be ''job number one'' for O'Keefe to keep up with discussions of space shuttle safety, but that the administrator learned of the debate between the engineers only when NASA released the e-mails Wednesday.

''Why was it that even if there was hint of a footnote of a memo on a scrap of an envelope that was within this investigation's scope, that it only made its way to you yesterday, at the same time it made its way to everyone else on the AP wire,'' Weiner asked. ''This is stunning to me that this is the process being followed. That's crazy. You must have gotten these memos and hit the roof. Is that a fair characterization?''

''It looks like that dialogue went on at exactly the right level,'' responded O'Keefe. He said senior engineers made the decision. How NASA handles such engineering decisions will be considered, among other issues, by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, he said.

''We want to know the truth and will make the corrections indicated,'' said O'Keefe.

Associate Administrator William Readdy, who attended the hearing, told reporters afterward that the debate between the NASA engineers about the possibility that Columbia was damaged during launch and could experience catastrophic problems during reentry or landing was typical of discussion in the space shuttle program. ''That is what engineers and flight controllers do each and every mission,'' said Readdy, a former astronaut.

He said the discussion was not passed to his management level at NASA's headquarters in Washington. ''It was being looked at on the proper level,'' said Readdy.

O'Keefe said that a Russian Soyuz spacecraft now docked at the international space station will be used to return three crew members to Earth next month and that a two-member replacement crew will be sent to the station aboard another Soyuz.

He said that process could be repeated every six months for the next year and a half.

The administrator told the committee that the 16 nations participating in the space station project have ''acted like partners'' in deciding how to respond to the space shuttle accident.

He said the European Space Agency has agreed to make a payment to Russia and that this money would be credited toward the expense of later flying a European to the space station.

O'Keefe said the station would be resupplied by additional flights of the Russian Progress, a cargo spacecraft that can dock automatically at the station. He said the Russians have agreed to build enough spacecraft to send four Progress ships to the space station this year and five in 2004.

The NASA administrator said that the space station would be abandoned only if the crew was endangered. Otherwise, he said a two-member crew could conduct science and maintain the orbiting laboratory.