After a decade, NASA finally reveals the root cause of the failure of two rocket launches

A little more than a decade ago, on February 24, 2009, a Taurus XL rocket was launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying a NASA satellite designed to measure carbon dioxide levels in the United States. l & # 39; atmosphere. However, the payload never separated properly from the rocket and, because of the additional mass, the combination of the probe and the rocket could not reach the orbit.

Two years later, on March 4, 2011, another Taurus XL rocket was launched from Vandenberg, again carrying a scientific payload for NASA. This Glory satellite would have measured the properties of sulfate and other aerosols in the atmosphere. Again, the payload did not separate properly from the rocket and it's a total loss.

Together, the loss of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory satellites cost the space agency $ 700 million. Since then, the space agency's launch service program and rocket manufacturer, Orbital Sciences – acquired since by Northrop Grumman – have conducted investigations into what happened.

Over time, some information came out. Shortly after the launch, it was clear that the payload fairing did not separate from the two rockets. And in 2015, the company that supplied aluminum extrusions for the Taurus XL solid rocket four-stage booster, Sapa Profiles Inc. (SPI), admitted to falsifying the quality control test results of its products.

But it is only now that the story has appeared in more detail. This week, NASA released a summary of its ten years of investigation into mission failures. Long story short: defective aluminum extrusions used in the mechanism by which the payload separates from the rocket, called breakable seal, prevented the separation from occurring fully. Much of the report looks at the process by which NASA has succeeded in supporting this conclusion.

The investigation revealed that SPI had falsified material records used in its extrusions for about a decade. Handwritten internal accounts of SPI's physical properties tests revealed that the company had modified more than 2,000 test results between 1996 and 2006, affecting more than 200 customers.

To protect the government's supply chain, SPI has been excluded from public procurement since September 30, 2015. NASA has also proposed an exclusion measure for Hydro Extrusion Portland, Inc., formerly known as SPI, and this company is also federal government.

"Largely thanks to the hard work and dedication of many highly motivated people from NASA's launch service program, we are able to solve the cause of two extremely disappointing launcher outages and protect the chain of custody." aerospace government procurement, "said Amanda Mitskevich, LSP Program Manager at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "It has taken a long time to get here, requiring years of investigation and testing, but starting today, every minute is worth it, and I am extremely pleased with the efforts of the entire team."