NASA's independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is scheduled to hold its final quarterly meeting of the year today from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's Astronaut Encounter Theatre. The meeting is open to the public.
The seven-member panel was formed in 1968 after the Apollo 1 launch pad fire that killed three astronauts.
According to the meeting's notice in the Federal Register, today's agenda will include updates on safety mission assurance, overviews of the KSC's Launch Services Program and the International Space Station Commercial Resupply Services program, and an update on thrust oscillation that designers of the Ares I rocket are working to minimize.
the panel reviews, identifies, evaluates and advises on program activities, systems, procedures and management activities that can contribute to program risk, especially those involving the safety of human flight.
In testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee last month, the panel's chairman, Vice Admiral Joseph Dyer, said the panel strongly opposed extending space shuttle flights.
NASA currently plans to fly six more missions before retiring its three shuttle orbiters late next year or in 2011.
Read Dyer's testimony here. And click here for the panel's 2008 annual report, the most recent available.
The Visitor Complex is located off of State Road 405 just outside the gate to KSC.
IMAGE: Vice Admiral Joe Dyer, USN (Ret.); Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Chair; President, Government & Industrial Robots Division, iRobot Corp.; Former Commander, Naval Air Systems Command. Credit: NASA ASAP.
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