Panel: Issues remain before shuttle can fly

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2005 | by Traci Watson

HOUSTON -- Five weeks before NASA wants to return the space shuttle to orbit, the agency has not yet completed some major tasks that are prerequisites for launching the spacecraft, an independent oversight panel said Wednesday.

NASA hasn't finished analyzing how much debris might fall off the shuttle's fuel tank and hit the fragile ship, members of the panel said. Nor has the agency nailed down its estimates of how much damage such a debris strike could do. And a recommendation that NASA develop a way to fix damage to the shuttle in orbit has generated so much controversy among panel members that they broke into argument at a public meeting Wednesday.

"We're getting down to the hard ones now," said Joseph Cuzzupoli, a member of the Stafford-Covey Return to Flight...