NASA discovers a 19-year-old fraud that resulted in mission failures

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An Oregon company has provided falsified testing to a NASA rocket builder for nearly two decades.
The company is now owed $ 46 million in payments and the laboratory manager went to jail.
NASA can not test each component itself, so it is important that the supply chain is protected.

An aluminum manufacturer in Oregon has defrauded NASA for nearly twenty years, resulting in failed missions, the Justice Department announced.

Sapa Profiles Inc. (SPI), now known as Hydro Extrusion Portland Inc., A 19-year swindle involving the falsification of thousands of critical test documents led to the failure of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory missions in 2009 and 2011.

The multi-year survey of NASA's launch services program revealed that the malfunctions were caused by a defect in aluminum. The launcherfairings " – specialized clamshell structures covering mission satellites aboard the Taurus XL rocket – failure of separation due to SPI-provided metal deficiency.

Company employees routinely changed disruptive figures and violated test standards and specifications, changing the speed of the machines used for testing, and using incorrect sample sizes. Wrong information on aluminum extrusions was then used by Orbital Sciences Corporation, the rocket manufacturer, in the "fragile seal" of the payload fairing rails.

Image credit: NASA / JPL

Artist concept of the Observatory of carbon in orbit, supposed to study atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The company went so far as to use other customers, some under contract with the government, to provide deceptive certifications.

SPI (Portland Hydro Extrusion) is now owed $ 46 million in payments, a small price to pay if one considers the $ 700 million cost of missed missions attributable to these aluminum defects. Jim Norman, director of launch services at NASA headquarters in Washington, explained the seriousness of the fraud, saying that NASA simply could not test each component and that, if the suppliers were dishonest, the missions could fail.

"In our case, the XL Taurus that failed for the OCO and Glory missions resulted in the loss of more than $ 700 million and many years of scientific work," said Norman. "It is essential that we be able to trust our industry to produce, test and certify the materials to the required standards, in which case our trust has been severely violated."

US Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger for the Eastern District of Virginia, commenting for the DOJ, did not mince his words either:

"For nearly two decades, SPI and its employees have concealed nonconforming manufacturing processes by brazenly distorting test results," Terwilliger said. "They then provided the false test results to hundreds of customers across the country, with the goal of increasing corporate profits and obtaining production-based bonuses."

All criminal and civil lawsuits against Sapa Profiles Inc. are resolved through this arrangement. Trial laboratory supervisor Dennis Balius was sentenced to three years in prison for his role. The company has been suspended from its relationship with the US government since 2015.