Nasa is not properly emphasising safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon programme faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel has found.

Nasa is not properly emphasising safety in its design of a new spaceship and its return-to-the-moon programme faces money, morale and leadership problems, an agency safety panel has found.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cited "surprising anxiety among Nasa employees" about the Constellation moon programme and said the project "lacks clear direction". Its report this week faulted the agency's design of the Orion crew capsule for not putting safety features first.

Officials defending the design safety at a news conference, wouldn't say whether astronauts are among the worried employees. Astronauts would have to fly in the Orion crew capsule, with a first launch planned by 2015.

Past Nasa spaceships were built with enough back-up safety systems "to ensure safety and reliability," from the start, the report said.

In the Orion project, any added safety feature would have to "earn its way in" by justifying that the increased safety was worth the cost and weight.

That's not right, said the safety advisory panel.

Nasa's Constellation programme officials defended the safety of the evolving spaceship design, but acknowledged that some Nasa employees are unhappy with it.

"We're not going to please everybody," Constellation programme manager Jeff Hanley said. "If we tried to please everybody the spacecraft would not get off the ground."

He said he had not seen the safety panel's report, which praised some aspects of the programme.

Officials announced that their own internal schedule for the first launch of the Orion capsule with astronauts aboard is being pushed back. Now it's aiming internally for September 2014. Nasa plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2020.