Some safety improvements were skipped by National Aeronautic and Space Administration officials as they tried to meet unrealistic launch dates for the space shuttle Discovery, seven members of a larger oversight panel have said in a scathing critique.
Poor leadership also made the shuttle's return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be, the task force members said.
In fact, some of the 'disturbing traits' that contributed to the Columbia tragedy such as smug, overbearing managers influencing key decisions were still present in the months leading up to Discovery's flight, the panelists noted.
"We expected that NASA leadership would set high standards for post-Columbia work. We were, overall, disappointed," they wrote in the task force's final report issued on Wednesday.
The seven critics included a former shuttle astronaut, former undersecretary of the Navy, former Congressional Budget Office director, former moon rocket engineer, retired nuclear engineer and two university professors.
They were part of the 26-member task force that monitored NASA's progress in meeting the recommendations set forth by the Columbia accident investigators.
The task force concluded in an advance summary in late June, just a month before Discovery's lift-off on the first mission since the Columbia disaster that the space agency had failed to satisfy three of the 15 return-to-flight recommendations.