Satellite Damaged (Hold My Beer Alert)

Earth Science Missions Anomaly Report: GOES/POES Program/POES Project: 6 Sep 2003

TO: GSFC: 100/A. Diaz, 100/W. Townsend, 100/ 400/D Perkins, NASA HQ: Y/G. Asrar, Y/M. Luther, Q/B O’Connor

As the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was being repositioned from vertical to horizontal on the "turn over cart" at approximately 7:15 PDT today, it slipped off the fixture, causing severe damage. (See attached photo). The 18' long spacecraft was about 3' off the ground when it fell.

The mishap was caused because 24 bolts were missing from a fixture in the “turn over cart”. Two errors occurred. First, technicians from another satellite program that uses the same type of “turn over cart” removed the 24 bolts from the NOAA cart on September 4 without proper documentation. Second, the NOAA team working today failed to follow the procedure to verify the configuration of the NOAA “turn over cart” since they had used it a few days earlier.

The shock and vibration of the fall undoubtedly caused tremendous damage. Significant rework and retest will be required. NOAA-N Prime is planned for launch in 2008.

Lockheed Martin formed an Accident Review Team in which GSFC is participating. The immediate actions concern safety (preventing the spacecraft from rolling, discharging the batteries, and depressurizing the propulsion system). NOAA-N Prime is under guard, all records have been impounded, and the personnel interviewed. After the safety issues are addressed, attention will focus on assessing the damage to NOAA-N Prime.

I am surprised this doesn't happen more often. Work procedures are very exacting and detailed.

I had a discussion with my brother several years ago, and he said that because of Al Gore's 'reducing paperwork', thousands of procedures were being revised and rewritten, throwing out reams and reams of very specific steps, and turning them into worthless 'general guidelines'. He expected a lot more of things like this to happen. Perhaps we haven't had more because of the individual knowledge of individual workers at the space center. But..... as these guys leave/retire/die off no one will be left who has perfromed the procedure before, and the engineers who designed it will be gone also, so expect a lot more of this in the future.

We will end up with a shuttle program built like 'Microsoft Windows', where nobody knows what the original code means anymore.

We never had a lack of procedures at KSC. But some of them weren't right.

But it was so difficult to change them, that everybody just winked at each other and did what needed to be done. If you complained about the procedure, you were labeled a troublemaker. This ISO 9000 crap has only compounded the problem.

It was the same in the nuclear power industry - even worse.

When I was in the Activation group at KSC working on MLP-3, I was responsible for all the T-0 cables. The LES Cable Shop was overwhelmed, and so we had to contract out the fabrication to Olsen Electric out of Daytona Beach.

So we gave Olsen the official specifications which were (allegedly) used to fabricate the cables. It turned out that these were twenty years out of date, and the LES Cable Shop did it their own way. They had their own QC who would sign off on the work even though it was contrary to the specifications. It wasn't wrong, technically, it just wasn't per written specifications.

But Olsen had no such leeway - they HAD to use the official procedure if they wanted to get paid. So I had to go back and try and change all the Apollo cable specs and bring them up to the way it was really supposed to be done in the 90's. What a treat it was getting all the NASA DE weenies to put their signatures on the change.

It will be interesting to hear the results of this investigation, if we ever do.

I know that good people are not treated well in today's space program where diversity and sycophancy rules.

I really empathize. DE was the pitts of 'prima donnas' who weren't so 'primo'.

They used to perpetually be late on their drawings and specificaitons, then blame logistics for not having the parts, when they hadn't even completed the design.

I finally got us caught up enough, and started demanding drawings and specs before being put on logistics hold. It really burned them, to be caught in their own game. They finally started kicking me out of meetings when I started holding them to their own schedules.

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