NASA TAKES IN $135,000,000 COSTS AFTER TECHNICIAN MADE SIMPLE ERROR ON SATELLITE
Whether you're unboxing your TV, carrying a tray of drinks or carting a $233 million satellite, you do so with extreme caution. You would undoubtedly cry if you dropped your TV while hanging it on the wall. Dropping a tray of beverages is equally heartbreaking, but what about millions of dollars' worth of expensive, high-tech equipment?
That's what an outsourced technician from a business that NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contracted unintentionally accomplished. In 2003, Lockheed Martin Corporation, a defence and aerospace company based in Maryland, was contracted to build the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite. Given that the incident occurred more than 20 years ago, the piece of technology would have cost more than $400 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars.
The accident occurred when the satellite was being moved from a vertical to horizontal position and accidentally fell a meter onto a concrete surface. After the expensive error, an investigation was conducted, and it was found that a very small detail was responsible for the disastrous damage. At the time, it was stated that the satellite's lack of just 24 bolts was the source of the physical damage. The spaceship had to be fastened to a machine known as the Turn-Over Cart (TOC) using the bolts.
According to a NASA study, "The NOAA project team was not informed that another project had removed the bolts from the TOC while the cart was in a common staging area." The satellite was in ruins, but fortunately, no one was hurt. Naturally, Lockheed Martin was given the bill, and to pay for the damages, it had to forgo any profits it had made or planned to make. The US government covered the remaining costs.
NASA spokesperson Dave Steitz stated at the time, "And I hope George W. Bush was sitting down when he received the news since they had to pay a stunning $135 million," according to Space.com.Buddy Nelson, a spokesman for Steitz and Lockheed Martin, stated that at least 15% of the satellite later needed to be replaced. He said in a statement at the time: "Lockheed Martin has voluntarily contributed to the rebuild effort all profit previously earned and paid on the contract. "The business will complete the N-Prime satellite bus on a cost-only basis, eschewing any revenues that Lockheed Martin may have otherwise received for this spacecraft bus."
The satellite was supposed to launch in December 2007, however, it wasn't until February 2009. The NOAA-19, the name it was later given, marked the last of the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's series of weather satellites.
