Nasa sent a new crew to the International Space Station despite warnings that conditions in the orbiting spacecraft posed a serious risk to astronauts, it emerged yesterday.
Two senior officials claimed the equipment used to monitor radiation, water quality and the build-up of dangerous chemicals was malfunctioning. A defibrillator which monitors and treats the astronauts’ hearts was faulty and could be a fire risk, they warned.
The crew, commanded by British-born Michael Foale, took off from Kazakhstan on Saturday. Their Soyuz craft docked with the space station on Monday.
The battle over the mission has emerged as Nasa officials sought to distance themselves from the increasingly risky venture. The report into the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February found that the concerns of mid-level staff had been overruled by managers who were prepared to accept a rising level of risk to keep to launch schedules.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that two Nasa officials, Nitza Cintron, head of space medicine, and William Langdoc, chief of the habitability and environmental factors office, had refused to certify the latest mission and filed dissenting opinions.
They wrote: ”The continued degradation in the environmental monitoring system, exercise countermeasures system, and the health maintenance system … and extremely limited resupply, all combine to increase the risk to the crew to the point where initiation of [the mission] is not recommended.”
Nigel Packham, an environmental safety specialist, said at a meeting before the launch that ”no capability exists” to monitor the accumulation of trace contaminants to make sure they do not pose serious risks, according to minutes of the meeting quoted by the newspaper.
One medical official said space station astronauts had recently experienced headaches, dizziness and ”an inability to think clearly” — possibly related to the malfunctions.
Nasa managers refused to cancel the mission, saying that leaving the space station unmanned could endanger the whole project. Without astronauts aboard, they said, it could spin out of control.
The Nasa administrator, Sean O’Keefe, said the officials’ concerns had been discussed and the two dissenters were now ”quite comfortable” with the way their problems were being tackled.
A Nasa spokesperson, Robert Mirelson, said a meeting of engineers at all levels had agreed that the launch would be ”well within the parameters of safety”. – Guardian Unlimited Â