The newspaper, citing NASA officials, said the agency had apparently concluded that no enormously time-consuming changes will be required before the shuttle fleet returns to space.

Officials told the daily the upcoming report by the Columbia Accident Investigation board may include problems they are not yet aware of, but the existing problems can be fixed with changes in hardware and management of the manned spaceflight program.

An interim recommendation could come as early as Tuesday telling NASA to work to fix the problems with falling foam, develop techniques to repair shuttle damage in orbit and develop rescue strategies, the Times reported.

None of those recommendations will present insurmountable obstacles to returning to space, a board official said.

"There's an idea of what the technical issues are. The board's been very open about discussion of all of those," NASA spokesman Robert Jacobs told the Times.

The board has already found that a few pounds of insulating foam that fell away from Columbia's fuel tank on take-off led to the ship's breakup February 1 on re-entry, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

SPACE.WIRE