ASAP Calls Lack of Clarity a Key Safety Concern

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released its annual report today, saying that “lack of clarity and constancy of purpose among NASA, Congress, and the White House is a key safety concern.”

The panel, created by Congress after the 1967 Apollo fire that killed three astronauts, advises NASA on how to improve its safety performance. Chaired by Vice Adm. Joe Dyer (Ret.), the panel concluded that despite the signing into law of the 2010 NASA authorization act, NASA’s future human spaceflight program remains “uncertain.” The lack of a defined mission, the panel says, “can negatively impact workforce morale and the ability to attract and maintain the necessary skill sets for this high-technology venture.” A consensus position on “the Agency’s future and our Nation’s future in space” is needed quickly, they said.

Other issues identified in the report include the connection between acquisition strategy and safety in human spaceflight systems, knowledge transfer from the Constellation program to whatever replaces it, “how safe is safe enough,” the relationship between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in providing oversight for commercial crew operations, the robustness of NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance workforce, safety implications of aging NASA infrastructure, standardization of approaches to dealing with a variety of issues within the agency, astronaut health and longitudinal health study data, challenges with extending the International Space Station (ISS) to 2020, and the risks inherent in depending on a single source — Russia — for crew access to the ISS.