Getting really HIGH

The US space agency has faced tough questions over a report that astronauts had shown up for duty drunk.

The troubled National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) planned to hold a news conference to address the alarming report appearing in an industry magazine that astronauts had been allowed to fly spacecraft while drunk on at least two occassions.

According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, an internal NASA panel found "heavy use of alcohol" inside the standard 12-hour "bottle to throttle" abstinence period for NASA flight-crew members.

NASA said that the agency would investigate the case further and confirmed an internal review included secondhand accounts of astronauts drinking before flights, the Washington Post reported.

"We take this and other parts of the reports very seriously and will look into it," spokesman David Mould said.

"But we need to verify the facts before we can know what the appropriate action might be."

Mr Mould said details of the internal review would be released Friday and that it was unclear if the reports of drinking referred to space shuttle flights, test flights or other vehicles, the paper said.

'Full-blown crisis'

Already under pressure over a range of issues, NASA could face a full-blown crisis as US lawmakers focus on the account of allegedly drunken astronauts.

"If the reports of drunken astronauts being allowed to fly prove to be true, I think the agency will have a lot of explaining to do," Bart Gordon, chairman of the House of Representatives' science and technology committee, said.

"That's not the 'right stuff' as far as I'm concerned," he said, alluding to a 1983 film about early NASA crews, "The Right Stuff", based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book.