Confronted with the same kind of problem that doomed the space shuttle Columbia, NASA officials, chastened by years of criticism and upheaval in the agency, took a markedly different approach during the current mission of the Endeavour, calling on an array of new tools and procedures to analyse and respond to the problem.While the Columbia faced a much more serious damage — a 6- to 10-inch hole punched in a wing that let in hot gases during re-entry—outside officials said that with the Endeavour, NASA had taken steps far more elaborate and methodical in concluding that the craft was still safe.“The comparison is night and day,” said John M Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who served on the investigation board that looked into the Columbia disaster. He said he thought NASA had handled the Endeavour situation perfectly.Engineers and officials with the NASA will not know how accurate their analysis was or whether their decision to forgo a repair of a gouge in the Endeavour’s underside was the correct one until the shuttle is back on Earth. The landing is scheduled for tomorrow. But in manoeuvres as simple as having the Endeavour perform a slow back flip to allow the crew aboard the International Space Station to photograph the shuttle’s belly, to the use of a new laser scanner that showed the exact shape and size of the damage, NASA officials demonstrated the vast changes in procedures, attitude and culture of the agency since the Columbia accident four years ago.In both missions, a piece of foam fell from the fuel tank, damaging the shuttle; both times, NASA officials expressed confidence that there would be no peril to spacecraft or crew.But this time, there is better reason to believe the assurances, outside experts say. For one, the piece of foam that hit the Endeavour was much smaller. And the accident, and the investigation board’s call for a transformation in the safety culture of NASA, led to changes within the agency. The head of the shuttle programme retired and the mission management team leader transferred out of the shuttle programme. New tools were developed to identify and analyse damage to the heat tiles, and senior managers began to make sure that dissenting voices could be heard. Perhaps the Endeavour analysis overlooked some crucial detail, but that possibility is “very, very slight,” Dr Logsdon said. “This episode is a good example of how the shuttle programme has changed.”
