The investigation into the Columbia disaster is expected to make grim reading at Nasa's headquarters.
The space agency will come under strong criticism for allowing safety standards to slip.
"The report will be a pretty strong indictment of Nasa's performance in ensuring the safety of human spaceflight," Dr John Logsden, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and member of the Investigation Board said.
"Nasa's performance, its organisation, its underlying values and culture have not been up to expectations and we have a lot of recommendations about how to change that."
Investigators say the "the most probable cause" of the shuttle Columbia's break-up was a piece of foam insulation hitting the shuttle's left wing.
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In order to save money, Nasa has excessively given away its technical capability
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Professor Howard McCurdy
"One of the things that's pretty obvious is that these foam insulation pieces had been falling off the external tank and hitting the orbiter for years," said Dr Roger Launius of the National Air and Space Museum and Nasa's former chief historian.
"Instead of saying, 'Oh My Gosh, we've got to fix this problem', they said the problem doesn't seem to be serious so they ignored it. And that complacency has to change."
He also criticised a certain arrogance in Nasa, in their presumption that the space agency has all the expertise and information it needs, and does not need to listen to additional advice from outside.
Communication failure is likely to be one of the key charges made against Nasa by the Gehman report.
'Lack of curiosity'
Dr Logsden said the agency had not learnt enough from the Challenger accident of 1986 - when concerns from engineers were not acted on by senior managers.
And he criticised Nasa's "lack of constant vigilance and lack of curiosity" about things that were not supposed to be happening.
Certain Nasa staff did make requests for images to be taken of Columbia in orbit to assess the damage, but these were never acted on.
Professor Howard McCurdy, an expert in space policy at American University, who has carried out extensive studies into Nasa's management and organisation, says one important problem is that the agency has lost crucial expertise by contracting out its activities to save money.
"Pockets of technical capability still exist in the agency, it's just not as strong as it was when Nasa, was Nasa. In order to save money, Nasa has excessively given away its technical capability."
The result was that the traditional checks and balances that would help prevent a disaster were not there, he added.
Government criticised
The report will also lay some blame for the disaster at the door of the presidency of the last 10 years and Congress - for squeezing the Nasa budget over the last decade.
"The report will be critical of the national leadership of the United States for continuing to expect lots of results from the space programme without giving it an adequate budget," Dr Logsden says.
"It has wanted Nasa to do great things but to do it as cheaply as possible."
Most space experts do believe that the shuttles - currently grounded - will fly again next year.
But opinion is divided over whether Nasa's administrator Sean O'Keefe will still be at the helm then.
He has been in the job for only about a year and may argue that he is best-placed to see the agency through the necessary reforms.
But Congress is due to hold hearings on the disaster and some experts believe that there is a desire for heads to roll.
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