NASA said Friday it was going to take immediate action after a report raised safety questions about astronauts drinking before flying missions.
The space agency said astronauts flew drunk at on at least two occasions, despite warnings from doctors and colleagues that they posed a flight risk.
As a result, NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale said new procedures would be put in place immediately, including an internal review and a no-alcohol policy for 12-hours before all missions.
With the next space shuttle mission just two weeks away, Dale said NASA has "already had discussions with the crew commander of next shuttle mission and its flight surgeon." Officials have communicated "the allegations in the report and NASA's expectations of alcohol use and getting into a spacecraft."
The space agency said astronauts flew drunk at on at least two occasions, despite warnings from doctors and colleagues that they posed a flight risk.
As a result, NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale said new procedures would be put in place immediately, including an internal review and a no-alcohol policy for 12-hours before all missions.
With the next space shuttle mission just two weeks away, Dale said NASA has "already had discussions with the crew commander of next shuttle mission and its flight surgeon." Officials have communicated "the allegations in the report and NASA's expectations of alcohol use and getting into a spacecraft."
Dale said the goal was to insure that the flight surgeon and crew commander know that they are "expected and they are empowered to raise any flight safety issues that they have."
The report was prompted by the arrest of former astronaut Lisa Nowak, who was accused in February of the attempted kidnapping of a romantic rival.
According to the report, released earlier Friday, interviews with flight surgeons and astronauts "identified some episodes of heavy use of alcohol by astronauts in the immediate preflight period."
Dale said the agency would act immediately on reports of alcohol use, conduct an internal safety review and then "recommend corrective actions." NASA takes the report's recommendation for an astronaut code of conduct "very seriously," Dale said.
The committee report offered no specifics about the drinking episodes and said no attempt was made to confirm information given in interviews.
"Until we have more information, NASA cannot determine the veracity of these claims," the report said.
However, Air Force Col. Dr. Richard E. Bachmann, head of NASA's Astronaut Health Care System revealed a few more details of the claims Friday.
"There were two incidents described to us in more detail as more representative of a larger concern," said Bachmann. "One of those incidents involved both the shuttle and the T-38 [NASA jet aircraft] the second incident involved the Soyuz-ISS." Russian Soyuz spacecraft are used to ferry crew members to and from the international space station.
"There were still two incidents but they were structured such so that they involved all three operations," Bachman said, explaining that an astronaut was preparing to launch in a shuttle, but when the mission was delayed, the astronaut was to fly in the T-38.
Panelists looked into NASA's medical and psychological screening process and addressed other behavioral issues. "Preparation for exploration class space flight requires NASA to focus much more attention on human behavior," said the report.
"Alcohol is freely used in crew quarters," the report said. "Two specific instances were described where astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and/or fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety. However, the individuals were still permitted to fly."
The panel said certification of astronauts for flight duty has no method to detect drinking episodes.
It also recommended NASA develop a code of conduct for astronauts.
"In general, astronauts are highly motivated to fly," the report stated. "Opportunities to fly in space are scarce and decreasing. The criteria for flight selection and how they are applied are unknown to the astronauts. Medical and behavioral health issues are perceived as having high potential for use to eliminate astronauts from mission assignment."
The drinking allegations shocked former astronauts and came as NASA deals with the apparent sabotage of a computer bound for the orbiting international space station.
Earlier two former shuttle astronauts told CNN that the drinking allegations, if true, would be "mind-boggling."
One of the astronauts said he was not aware of anyone "unduly using alcohol prior to launch." The other said "not a chance," and added that he would have "thrown the person off the crew."
The astronauts asked that they not be named because of the sensitive nature of the allegations.
Former NASA flight surgeon Jonathan Clark told CNN he'd never heard such reports in the past, although he said he had seen crew allowed to fly while "extremely tired" from "pre-mission fatigue." "Many of them took sleeping pills to try get some normal sleep state, and there were times when crew were groggy."
He said there are traditional pre-flight celebrations and toasting with crew members and their families, "but the times I've been involved ... there was beer and wine but there wasn't any heavy drinking."
Clark said he attended many such events as a flight surgeon or as an astronaut spouse. Clark's wife Laurel Clark was killed along with six other astronauts in the 2003 Columbia disaster.
NASA's next scheduled space shuttle mission is August 7, for the crew of the orbiter Endeavour. A NASA spokesman said an internal investigation has been launched into the sabotage of the computer and said it would be repaired and ready for next month's liftoff.
The computer problem surfaced, NASA said, when a subcontractor who supplied the computer notified NASA. Workers checked the computer and found it was intentionally damaged.
The computer is to be installed aboard the station's U.S. laboratory to monitor sensors on the facility's truss, NASA said. It was not designed to be part of any command and control or navigation functions, he said
More About NASA to Investigate Claims That Astronauts Flew After Drinking
NASA has launched an investigation into claims that astronauts have flown despite appearing intoxicated based on a report by an independent health panel, the space agency said Friday.
"At this point, we're dealing with allegations and we need to find out what the ground truth is," NASA associate administrator Shana Dale said in a press briefing.
The investigation, as well as a new interim policy pertaining to alcohol use by spaceflyers prior to launch, stem from the findings of an independent review of NASA's astronaut health care system. The 12-page report, along with an internal NASA review on the agency's behavioral and medical practices, was released Friday.
U.S. Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann, Jr., a veteran flight surgeon who chaired the independent panel, said his committee found at least two instances in which a crewmember had reportedly drank heavily before flight. One involved astronauts flying aboard a NASA shuttle and T-38 aircraft, while the other relating to Russian Soyuz flight to the International Space Station, he said.
In one of the accounts, Bachmann said, an astronaut reported concerns over a fellow spaceflyer's condition after a shuttle launch was delayed, when the orbiter crew was leaving NASA's Florida spacewalk aboard on of the agency's T-38 training jets. But in both reports, he stressed, the astronauts or flight surgeons with concerns felt their input was disregarded, as the spaceflyers in question were ultimately allowed to fly.
"We cannot say with any certainty whether they, in fact, were at all under the influence or affected at the time they flew," Bachmann said of the astronauts in question, who were not named in the report, nor were the times, dates or specific missions of each account. "The issue of concern was that the medical advisors or the peers, who should be empowered to raise questions, felt like they were not."
Only about four paragraphs of the 12-page report were devoted to alcohol use of astronauts before flight.
Based on the recommendations from the two reports, Dale said NASA plans to devise an official astronaut code of conduct, as well as include a behavioral assessment to the annual flight physicals of its spaceflyers. The agency will also enhance the use of psychological evaluations for future astronaut selections and strive to ensure that safety concerns can be raised freely, she added.
NASA launched both astronaut health reviews in the days following the Feb. 5 arrest of former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak. Florida police officers arrested Nowak in a parking lot at the Orlando International Airport after she allegedly attacked a woman that authorities said she perceived as a romantic rival for the affections of then-space shuttle astronaut Williams Oefelein.
Nowak has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary with assault. NASA dismissed both Nowak and Oefelein from their astronaut duties earlier this year.
New policy in place
Dale and Ellen Ochoa, NASA's director of flight crew operations, said an interim spaceflight policy that prohibits astronauts from drinking alcohol in the 12 hours before a launch is now in place. That policy, taken from the agency's standing regulations governing flights of its T-38 training aircraft, was previously unofficially applied to human spaceflight, Ochoa said.
Meanwhile, NASA safety and mission assurance chief Bryan O'Conner has discussed the new policy with the commander and lead flight surgeon of the agency's next shuttle mission currently set for an Aug. 7 launch , Dale said.
In the week before launch, a shuttle astronaut crew enters quarantine to avoid developing sickness in flight. During that time, astronauts work through prelaunch activities, but their actions are not regulated during their off-duty time. Alcoholic beverages are freely available at NASA's astronaut crew quarters, NASA said.
"They are really responsible adults," Dale said of NASA's astronauts. "After they've finished their regular day of work, if they want to go back to crew quarters and have a beer I think that's okay."
In Kazakhstan, where U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts enter quarantine for up to three weeks before launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome, there is a preflight ceremony with champagne though NASA officials said they couldn't recall Americans actually drinking it.
"For them it's a great tradition in their society," Ochoa said of NASA's Russian counterparts, adding that it dates back to the first flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin nearly 50 years ago. NASA will talk with its spaceflyers to ensure the traditions of its Russian partners are properly respected, Ochoa added.
Former astronauts lamented that the report's anonymous anecdotes of astronaut drinking might tarnish the 26-year reputation of NASA and its shuttle flying astronaut corps.
"It doesn't fit with anything, anything that I've ever seen or heard," said former astronaut Tom Jones, who flew on four shuttle missions between 1994 and 2001. "I flew with about 20 people on four missions and I never saw anybody with any kind of problem in the hours before launch."
Jones said that, based on his experience with NASA flight surgeons and fellow astronauts, he finds it hard to believe that a spaceflyer would be cleared for flight with a known performance deficit, especially in an era that has seen two shuttle disasters - Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 - that ended in astronaut fatalities.
"There's no upside to letting this guy get a pass," Jones said. "This is where it all comes down to doing the job and doing it 100 percent effectively."
