Nasa chief says shuttle 'ready to go' in July

WASHINGTON - Shuttle Discovery should be ready to return to flight next month, Nasa chief Michael Griffin said one day after an oversight panel found the US space agency fell short on three key safety concerns.

"I think, based on what I know now, we're ready to go," Griffin told the US House of Representatives Science Committee when asked if the shuttle would launch between July 13 and July 31 as scheduled.

The three-ship shuttle fleet has been grounded since the fatal break-up of Columbia on February 1, 2003, while Nasa has worked to comply with 15 recommendations by an independent board that investigated the accident.

On Monday, an expert panel found the agency had failed to satisfy recommendations in three critical safety areas: the elimination of debris that might damage the shuttle, which was the problem that doomed Columbia; the "hardening" of the spaceship to withstand such debris; and the development of a reliable in-flight repair system to fix debris damage.

While panel members said Nasa was not in full compliance, they said that, in their view, the shuttle was safe to fly.

Griffin, who took over as Nasa administrator in April, acknowledged these shortcomings but put a stark choice before lawmakers: "At this point, we must say that we have reduced the level of risk from debris damage to an acceptable level ... or we must say we don't want to fly the shuttle again."

The final go-ahead for Discovery's launch is expected on Thursday, after a two-day Flight Readiness Review that Griffin said he would attend. The mission already has been postponed once, from May.

CHANGES FOR SPACE STATION

The return to shuttle flight is an essential step in the Bush administration's ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them to Mars.

The plan calls for shuttles to resume their role in construction on the International Space Station, which has been operating with a skeleton crew of two and reached only by Russian vehicles since the grounding of the shuttle fleet.

Under the current plan, it would take 28 shuttle flights to complete the space station but Griffin told the House committee there is not time to fly 28 flights to the space station and still retire the shuttle fleet by 2010, as called for in the Bush administration's programme.

That means the research agenda aboard the station will have to be re-tooled and Griffin said a report on that proposed change should be complete by September at the latest.

Griffin also said he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had written to the science committee asking for an amendment to the Iran Nonproliferation Act, which bars Nasa from buying space goods and services from Russia as long as Russia provides weapons, missile technology and conventional weapons technology to Iran.

Nasa will have to depend on Russia for certain services starting in April 2006 and would be barred from paying for them under the nonproliferation act if it is not amended.

That would mean US astronauts would only be allowed aboard the space station when the shuttle is docked there, Griffin said, and would miss the long-duration space experience that is key to preparing for any future flights to the moon and Mars.

"For the next several years, as the space station development and its partnership go forward, the United States is in the position where we cannot effectively utilise the space station without our Russian partners," Griffin said.

- REUTERS