The Stafford-Covey Return-to-Flight Task Group

International treaty required the United States to complete the core assembly of the International Space Station, up through the installation of Node 2 (later called the Harmony module) as soon as possible. NASA had previously committed to the US Congress that Node 2—onto which the European Space Agency’s Columbus module and the Japanese Kibo module would be berthed—would be launched by February 2004.

While meeting that date was clearly impossible after the Columbia accident, NASA was still c...