NASA鈥檚 steps to create a 鈥渟afety-first鈥� culture showed the first tentative signs of bearing fruit last week. But not without raising fresh concerns over how safe the agency can ever become.
In the wake of a damning report after the Columbia accident, the space agency set up the NASA Engineering and Safety Center based in Virginia, dedicated to improving standards. Most of the issues investigated by the centre in its first report, released on 12 May, came from lower-level NASA engineers, in an apparent vindication of the new post-Columbia commitment to listen to the concerns of all NASA staff. Ralph Roe, the centre鈥檚 head, said that safety queries are coming in at a rate of 200 a year.
The report published the results of investigations into three unmanned programmes as well as into one of the space shuttle鈥檚 crucial systems, its tail rudder and speed brake 鈥� vital for slowing the craft to a safe landing speed. Engineers鈥� concerns that the rudder鈥檚 lubricating grease would degrade over time proved to be unfounded. But the investigation spotted another potentially serious corrosion problem in the rudder system that nobody had noticed. The discovery raises thorny questions about how vigilant NASA will have to be to keep future shuttle astronauts safe.
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