Posted on 10/20/2004 8:32:31 AM PDT by boris
Lockheed Martin will forfeit all profits associated with a U.S. government weather satellite that was severely damaged in a mishap that NASA attributed to a lack of procedural discipline throughout the company's Sunnyvale, Calif., manufacturing facility.
Under an agreement with NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Lockheed Martin will help cover the cost of repairing the NOAA N-Prime satellite out of the profits it had earned, or was to earn, on the pro-gram. The government will foot the rest of the $135 million repair bill, according to NASA spokesman Dave Steitz.
NASA buys and launches weather satellites for NOAA.
Steitz and Lockheed Martin Space Systems spokesman Buddy Nelson declined to quantify the company's profit on the satellite, which is valued at $233 million. But the company took a $30 million charge against its 2003 third quarter earnings related to the factory-floor accident.
The NOAA N-Prime satellite was dam-aged in September 2003 when it fell nearly a meter onto a concrete floor at Lock-heed Martin's Sunnyvale plant. The physical cause of the accident was 24 missing bolts needed to secure the spacecraft to a device called the turn-over cart, which is used to rotate satellites from a vertical to horizontal position.
NOAA N-Prime is the last satellite in NOAA's Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite program, which has provided weather and climate information to U.S. government agencies for decades. Lockheed Martin and its legacy companies have built all of the satellites under that civilian program. NOAA and the U.S. Department of Defense are collaborating on the replacement system, dubbed the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, which is slated to begin launching around the end of the decade.
Most of the damage to NOAA N-Prime was sustained by the spacecraft chassis, but two of its six instruments will have to be rebuilt or replaced, Steitz said. Those instruments are the high resolution infrared radiation sounder and the solar backscatter ultraviolet radiometer, he said.
At least 15 percent of the platform components will have to be replaced, Nelson said. The company is testing some other components that were on the spacecraft at the time of the accident to see if they can still be used or repaired, he said.
"Lockheed Martin has voluntarily contributed to the rebuild effort all profit previously earned and paid on the contract," Nelson said. "The company will undertake the completion of the N-Prime satellite bus on a cost-only basis, forgoing all profits that otherwise might have accrued to Lockheed Martin for this spacecraft bus."
NOAA N-Prime now is scheduled to launch in December 2007 or January 2008. Before the accident, plans called for launching the satellite in 2008.
NASA, which probed the mishap, said Lockheed Martin personnel failed to follow proper procedures in handling the spacecraft. The "NOAA N-Prime Mishap Investigation: Final Report," released Oct. 4, also cited ineffective government over-sight as a contributing factor.
The "operations team's lack of discipline in following procedures evolved from complacent attitudes toward routine spacecraft handling, poor communication and coordination among operations team, and poorly written or modified procedures," the report said. "It is apparent to the [investigation board] that complacency impaired the team directly performing the operation and those providing super-vision or oversight to this team."
The report concluded that the procedural problems were pervasive across the Sunnyvale facility. "Many of the findings uncovered in this mishap investigation are not specific to this mishap but are systemic in nature," the report said.
Lockheed Martin has instituted stricter safety measures across all of its satellite manufacturing programs to prevent a similar mishap, Nelson said. "The evidence of our success is that our NASA and NOAA customers have asked us to rebuild the NOAA N-Prime satellite," he said.
NASA and NOAA also have established improved oversight of Lockheed Martin, according to Steitz and John Leslie, a NOAA spokesman. "We are bumping up our oversight of Lockheed Martin pro-grams at this facility," Steitz said. "We will be looking at projects across the board."
The only NASA-related satellites at the Sunnyvale facility are NOAA N-Prime and its sister satellite, NOAA-N, Steitz said. The facility has other work including several Department of Defense programs and integration and testing of commercial satellites manufactured at Lockheed Mar-tin's Newtown, Pa., facility.
NASA is satisfied with the efforts Lock-heed Martin has made thus far, Steitz said. "We don't think this will have an effect on future bids," he said. "Our corporate partner has responded completely to the report."
Comments: jbates@space.com
Hey, boss. You know that satellite we were workin' on?....
this-article-has-too-many-dashes
I can't imagine what it must have felt like to watch that satellite sloooowwwwlly begin to topple off that cart. I guess it's just one of those times when a feeling of complacency about an operation should set off alarm bells....
I don't know about other companies, but complacency is the problem. Workers from another satelite program "borrowed" the bolts for their program. (LM can't afford two sets of bolts?)
What did the workers feel, usually you have time to say, "Ah Sh**)
Then the turning crew failed to re inspect for the presence or absence of the bolts. (A solution would be a smart tool that "knows" when it is in an unsafe condition, but this is still no substitute for eyeball inspections when this much money is going to be moved.)
I don't know, but after over 20 years of safety work at Lockheed Martin - Sunnyvale, I hope some heads rolled after this mess up. Its not enough to give lip service to things like this.
Tell me about it . . . you're sitting in your office and you here the crash-tinkle-tinkle. Like that SWA ad: "Need to get away?"
here=hear
Heads did roll, from what I hear, but probably not too many among those who weren't in the room at the time.
This would make a good Southwest Airlines ad
"Need to Get Away?"
... Steitz and Lockheed Martin Space Systems spokesman Buddy Nelson declined to quantify the company's profit on the satellite, which is valued at $233 million. But the company took a $30 million charge against its 2003 third quarter earnings related to the factory-floor accident.
So in other words Uncle Sucker has agreed to pay $100 million for this mistake by Lockheed.
At least 15 percent of the platform components will have to be replaced, Nelson said. The company is testing some other components that were on the spacecraft at the time of the accident to see if they can still be used or repaired, he said.
So why does replacing the spacecraft chassis and 15% of the components and testing the rest cost $135 million? The hourly rate for the workers and the cost of the components can't be that high so isn't a lot of it just overhead for Lockheed?
I've read the parts of the official report that are on line: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/65776main_noaa_np_mishap.pdf
In my opinion the contractor needs to pay for all the direct damages plus costs due to any delays, etc. Only then will management be sufficiently motivated to do things right.
As a retired systems safety engineer it seems that some programs recognize the benefit of SSE personnel, and other programs do not. When the safety engineer is considered a non-essential person on the program payroll this kind of situation happens. The team would gladly have congratulated themselves on a successful operation without the presense of the safety engineer if the op had been successful. This would in turn lead to more ops being conducted without safety present. In fact I suspect this is how the sequence started, but is not mentioned in the report.
A final note, equipment like the TOC need to have a verification procedure that is current. When the bolts were removed from the equipment, the state of the equipment went from "verified" to "unverified". This should have been noted and it was not. Another example of poor discipline. I agree with you, remove the engineer and the management.
Yeah; sorry. My OCR app inserted them and I was in a rush and didn't catch them.
NOAA satellite: Lockheed
Mars Polar Lander: Lockheed
Mars Global Surveyor (feet/meters): Lockheed
Genesis (switches upside down): Lockheed.
What is the common thread here?
Your OCR did a pretty good job. Thanks for posting!
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