After seeing the Shuttle blast off into space back in June and feeling the ground rumble under my feet standing six miles away from the launch pad I also would need to knock a few back .

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- An independent health panel studying NASA astronauts found "heavy use of alcohol" before launch, according to a published report Thursday.


An independent panel reportedly found that flight surgeons allowed intoxicated astronauts to fly on space shuttle.

Aviation Week & Space Technology, a weekly trade journal, reported the finding from the panel on its Web site. The weekly said that the committee found that on at least two occasions, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so intoxicated that they posed a flight-safety risk.

The alcohol use by astronauts was within the standard 12-hour "bottle-to-throttle" rule applied to NASA flight crew members, Aviation Week reported. The panel was created following the arrest in February of former space shuttle flier Lisa Nowak, who was implicated in a love triangle

On Thursday afternoon, a media representative at Johnson Space Center in Houston said no one was answering any questions on the matter. NASA has scheduled a news conference for Friday to release the findings of a pair of reviews into astronauts' health.

Aviation Week said the report -- ordered by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin -- does not deal directly with Nowak or mention any other astronaut by name.

Nowak is accused of attacking the girlfriend of a fellow astronaut -- her romantic rival -- with pepper spray in a parking lot at Orlando International Airport. Nowak has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary with assault.

Nowak was dismissed by NASA in March.

Following Nowak's arrest, NASA requested an independent external