CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An independent team that will judge NASA's readiness to return shuttles to flight began work at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, agency officials announced.

Known as the Stafford/Covey Task Group, the 27-member panel is charged with ensuring the space agency complies with all the findings and recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report -- something the officials vowed to do.

"There will be no attempt whatsoever to argue or defend a recommendation from the CAIB," NASA deputy administrator Fred Gregory told reporters. "They will tell us if we have gone down the wrong path or not."

In the meantime, the CAIB continues to finalize their report on the Feb. 1 loss of shuttle Columbia and its seven astronauts. NASA officials say they still expect the report to be released by the end of August and are pressing ahead with return to flight plans.

"We are making excellent progress on our return to flight efforts," Gregory said. "We are committed to return to flight, but we are committed to doing so as safely as we can."

Work schedules now show March 11 as a target launch date for Atlantis to lift off on the STS-114 mission to the International Space Station. But officials caution not to put too much weight on that date.

"If you see schedules that have a scheduled launch on it, it's only so that our folks can work toward a launch date," Gregory said. "It does not necessarily represent the actual date that we will return to flight in the shuttle, if we are able to."

Several new restrictions on when shuttles can launch -- such as in daylight, with the external tank separation also in daylight -- will reduce the number of days available to fly each year. For example, conditions line up to allow attempts between March 11 and April 6, but after that it could be a few weeks before another launch opportunity is available.

"March may be success oriented but we need to have something to get the team all marching in step on," said Bill Readdy, NASA's associate administrator for space flight.

Also anticipated in the CAIB report are suggestions about how NASA's culture played a role in Columbia's demise.

Board members have said repeatedly through their public hearings and press conferences that the intangible way NASA officials and others interact with each other as they go about their jobs could use some scrutiny.

But so far none of the five findings and recommendations already released have specifically addressed culture, and NASA's Gregory said they will wait for the report to come out before dealing with that topic.

Pressed again for comments, Readdy offered in response "there are a number of things we are doing."

Readdy talked about some changes to the management structure of NASA, including moving program management back to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"We're doing things like that in order to try and take a more 'one spaceflight,' a more 'one NASA' approach to what we're doing," Readdy said. "The comment that it's a culture thing maybe does apply in some small area."

Readdy cited the 1967 Apollo 1 fire as an instigator for a cultural change that swept through NASA and ultimately allowed the United States to get to the Moon first.

"The real challenge will be for us to identify those things that are very positive about our culture, and reinforce those. And whatever the CAIB may say in terms of the negative aspects of the culture, to identify those very specifically and go about fixing them," Readdy said.