Lockheed Martin Drops NOAA Satellite

An anonymous reader writes "Last Saturday, engineers at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale were rotating the NOAA-N spacecraft from vertical to horizontal when it slipped and fell - hard. SpaceRef has the story and a graphic photo of the damaged satellite."

Comments

This Kinda thing

[KMAPSRULE]

happens so often its only a matter of time before it really hurts someone:

First, technicians from another satellite program... removed the bolts...without proper documentation.
several programs I have worked on have had near accidents because parts were "borrowed" without redtags being applied. 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.

Complacency(sp?) Happens way to often in every job environment. And it takes a lot of discipline to force yourself to follow the procedures everytime day in/day out and beyond.