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Return-to-Flight Task Group Issues Final Report

19 August 2005

Group evaluates NASA's progress in implementing recommended changes

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- On August 17, the Stafford-Covey Return-to-Flight Task Group – co-chaired by retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas Stafford and retired Air Force Colonel Richard Covey – issued its final report.

The task group is a 26-member panel formed in 2003 to monitor the agency’s progress in implementing recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) after the Columbia shuttle accident.

A summary of the report was released June 27, a month before Discovery’s scheduled launch. (See related article.)

“Relative to the 15 specific recommendations that the CAIB indicated should be implemented prior to returning to flight,” the report said, “NASA has met or exceeded most of them – the Task Group believes that NASA has fully met the intent of the CAIB for 12 of these recommendations.”

Three recommendations that NASA did not implement included eliminating debris shedding from the external tank during launch, strengthening the shuttle against impacts, and developing on-orbit repair procedures for damaged shuttle tiles and panels.

But, the panel said, “The inability to fully comply with all of the CAIB recommendations should not imply that the space shuttle is unsafe.”

The task group’s final report included a “minority report” by seven panel members who wanted observations “not related to the shuttle’s safety or operational readiness” made over the group’s two-year fact-finding period to be brought to the NASA administrator’s attention.

The minority report called their criticisms – by a former shuttle astronaut, a former Navy under secretary, a former congressional budget office director, a former aerospace engineer, a retired nuclear engineer and two university professors – “a detailed summary of persistent cultural symptoms we observed throughout the assessment process.”

The minority report said NASA had not learned some important lessons cited by the CAIB report.

In particular, the minority report said, “leadership and managerial failures to set expectations and requirements and a failure to hold people accountable ... promoted a lack of engineering rigor, discipline and integrated risk assessment.”

During an August 18 NASA press conference, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said he had not yet read or discussed the full Stafford-Covey report, including the minority report, but welcomed all comments.

“I was asked if I wanted to have the minority comments in the overall report and I said yes,” Griffin said. “Because I think as NASA we do a disservice to ourselves and to our stakeholders and frankly to the taxpayers by creating an appearance that we do not wish to hear what people have to say if it should be negative.”

There might be issues NASA needs to address, he added. “We’ve worked hard at NASA over the last two and a half years to improve the situation that led to the loss of Columbia but we don’t suppose that we’re done,” Griffin said.

“One of the reasons I was very receptive to the minority report was [that] we can’t get done unless we’re willing to listen to all the hard truths,” he said.

The final report (PDF format, 220 pages) of the Return-to-Flight Task Group, as well as more information about the shuttles’ return to flight, is available on the NASA Web site. 

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)