spacetoday.net: NASA reconstitutes safety panel

Posted: Wed, Nov 19, 2003, 10:36 AM ET (1536 GMT)
NASA

NASA has appointed a new set of people to serve on an independent safety panel, replacing the previous members who resigned en masse two months ago. The nine people, plus a tenth ex officio member, will make up a reorganized Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), an organization chartered in the wake of the Apollo 1 accident in 1967. The new panel members come from the military, government agencies, academia, and the commercial sector, although none of the members are NASA employees or work for major NASA contractors. The new members include Steven Wallace, who served on Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), and Deborah Grubbe, who served as a consultant to the CAIB. The new ASAP will report to NASA on a quarterly basis, rather than annually as it had in the past, and will focus on the agency's "safety and quality systems", including industrial and systems safety, risk management, and trend analysis. The new members, and organizational changes, come after the former nine members of ASAP, along with two consultants, resigned as a group in late September after being criticized as ineffective.