NASA Cites Progress in Columbia Board Recommendations

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kai_25

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NASA will meet all of the return to flight recommendations laid out by the Columbia accident investigators as the agency works to launch the Discovery space shuttle and complete the International Space Station (ISS), NASA officials said today. <br /><br />The agency has already met five of the 15 recommendations set in a report by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) which was released on this day one year ago. The remaining 10 recommendations are to be addressed by year's end. <br /><br />"We think we have a process in hand to close the remaining 10 items by December," said William Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, during a teleconference with reporters today. "We'll be driven by those milestones."<br /><br />The CAIB report, released on Aug. 26, 2003, included the 15 recommendations specific for NASA's return to flight and called for an improvement in NASA's internal culture to prevent another disaster akin to the Feb. 1, 2003 loss of the seven astronauts aboard the Columbia shuttle. <br /><br />"That report turned out to be a framework for our return to flight activities and beyond," Readdy said. "We found out what happened [to Columbia], we're fixing it, and we've shifted from planning to execution of those recommendations." <br /><br />Return to flight<br /><br />Since the Columbia accident and the CAIB report release, NASA engineers have been preparing the Discovery and Atlantis space shuttles for flight, incorporating a suite of new detection and safety systems into the orbiters and their ground operations. <br /><br />"It's been a hard year," said Bill Parsons, NASA's space shuttle program manager. "We've made a significant progress in getting return to flight ready for next year." <br /><br />Discovery is slated to be the next shuttle to fly, and is slated to carry the STS-114 mission into orbit between March 16 and April 18 of 2005, Readdy said.<br /><br />The orbiter has entered its processing phase for the spring launch, but tests st
 
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shuttle_rtf

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Isn't this article a number of weeks old? I'm sure I've read it before a while ago.<br /><br />Appologies if not.
 
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