Posted: Sat, Oct 9, 2004, 10:08 AM ET (1408 GMT)
A former NASA employee pled not guilty Friday to charged that he faked shuttle safety inspections. Billy Thornton was charged with a total of 166 felony counts of fraud and filing false reports earlier this week; he pled not guilty to all the charges during a brief arraignment Friday in Orlando. Prosecutors charge that Thornton covered up a lack of inspections of electrical and structural systems in the shuttle Discovery between October 2002 and May 2003. The shuttle did not fly during that period, and reinspections performed later found no problems. Discovery is scheduled to fly on the first post-Columbia shuttle mission no earlier than May 2005. Thornton's trial is scheduled for December.

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