NASA’s steps to create a “safety-first” 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…
