The investigations did not uncover alarming safety threats. NASA officials cautioned beforehand that the center's findings

would not be shocking, stressing that they wanted to start with relatively simple issues. And the new center doesn't fill all of the safety holes highlighted by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

But Roe said the findings show how concerns raised by individual NASA employees can spur investigations that uncover problems and recommend changes to prevent future accidents.

"I'm very happy to have gotten to this point," Roe said.

The safety center addressed concerns from both high-ranking officials and relatively low-level engineers. NASA officials say the agency is responding to the Columbia board's recommendation to open channels of communication. During the Columbia mission, safety issues raised by several engineers, including a NASA Langley researcher, never made it up the chain of command.

The safety center's first four findings concerned:

the grease used in the space shuttle's rudder and speed brake system.

aerodynamic analysis of the X-43a experimental aircraft.

landing trajectories of the Mars rovers, with recommendations for future landers.

safety concerns about the spacecraft that will carry the CALIPSO satellite into orbit next year.

The NASA Safety and Engineering Center has not been immune to criticism.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board report named Roe as one of several NASA officials who made poor decisions during the doomed shuttle mission that took the lives of seven astronauts last year. His appointment to an agency-wide safety position raised eyebrows inside and outside the agency.

Roe said he wasn't thinking about Columbia at Wednesday's meeting, which was attended by about 250 NASA officials. He said he was proud that NASA willingly committed its best technical experts to the safety center.

"I'm just proud of my team," he said.

The safety center has a $45 million startup budget and a staff of 60 full-time and about 150 on-call experts from NASA, the military and academia. Seventeen full-time employees are based at Langley. The others stay immersed in research at a variety of NASA centers.

 

Feedback to the center is growing to a pace of about 200 requests per year, Roe said.

Through e-mail, phone calls and letters, the center has received 49 queries dealing with safety and engineering concerns within NASA. Roe said the safety center tracks each query to completion, through either in-house investigation or referral to another group within NASA.

"My first fear was that no one would call," Roe said. "My second fear was that everyone would call." The current pace is manageable, but Roe expects he'll need more than $45 million next year to keep up with demand.

One NASA observer said he was impressed by Roe's work.

"This sounds like the NASA of the 1960s," said Howard McCurdy, a public affairs professor at American University who wrote a book about the inner workings of the space agency. "Back then, the underlying cultural philosophy was that you understood the system, you proved it worked and then you flew. If you have a risk, you understand the risk."

John Logsdon, a member of the Columbia accident board and director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, lauded the safety center for providing additional technical support for NASA safety organizations, but said another panel with more authority still was needed.

The Columbia board wanted NASA to form an authority to set and maintain technical standards and be the sole organization that can grant waivers to those standards. The safety center does not do that, Logsdon said.

"It can be a useful addition to NASA's management of risky programs," Logsdon said, "But it does not have the kind of power the board envisioned, to be able to stop forward movement in an ongoing program when safety issues require such a move."

NASA officials concede the safety center isn't enough and are still working on forming an independent authority.