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

Shit..

[leifm]

And I thought I was pissed when I dropped my iBook...

Ouch!

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I can't begin to imagine the frustration for the people working on that project seeing their baby lying there like that. Note the two levels of failure. Even a well designed protocol can fail if the participants are sloppy on a regular basis. There's probably a moral for all of us there.

They're lucky

[Rick the Red]

that nobody got hurt! Can you imagine the shock to someone standing next to it when it fell?

Re:They're lucky

[hey!]

Plus the propellant system was pressurized which apparently presents some risk to techicians simply going in and messing around with the thing right now. Anyone know whey propellant was loaded in a craft that isn't scheduled to launch for five years? Perhaps the propulsion system was being pressure tested with an inert gas or something.

Re:They're lucky

[Xilman]

hypergolic (self igniting) fuels that are pretty much the most dangerous chemicals on earth, after plutonium.

With respect, this is garbage. Plutonium is pretty inoccuous stuff, as long as you don't go around assembling kilogram quantities of it in a small space. Chemically, Pu is about as toxic as lead. People survive for decades with lumps of Pb inside them. Radiologically, Pu is rather feeble too. Its half-life is many thousands of years and, although you wouldn't want to ingest it, there are many other elements that are much nastier. Radium is an obvious example.

I was a chemist in a previous life. I've dealt with chemicals that are markedly nastier than Pu, even in my relatively sheltered life. Elemental fluorine, for instance, and for that matter, azide salts which are either very toxic or detonators or both.

Biologists and biochemists deal with much nastier substances than most chemists.

Paul

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.

24 bolts?

[BigBir3d]

How the heck are 24 bolts missing? Someone is sooooo fired over this one!

Re:24 bolts?

[gnovos]

How the heck are 24 bolts missing? Someone is sooooo fired over this one!

And it will probably be the technician who removed them and not the manager who ordered it done.

Re:24 bolts?

[kasparov]

The places that I have worked, the person making a change to a project is responsible for documenting any change that they make. Pushing the responsibility for documentation to anyone else just doesn't make sense.

If the manager tells someone to make a change, documents it, and the guy has to go pick up his kids and doesn't get to it that day... you have problems. Documentation should be done only after a change is made, and then by someone who made (or at least witnessed) the change.

Re:24 bolts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta post Anonymously on this one. I know someone who works in this lab.... They have been working tons of overtime lately. They have been made to cover other peoples positions on projects that are not theirs through many early morning to cover the managments poor time management.
It sounds like the usual (and brings to mind the last big space oops), too few people working on too many projects with too tight of deadlines. It was a matter of time until something went wrong. Of course the managers will not get fired, no independent investigation to point the finger at them this time. But most likely the non-union engineers who have been working thier asses off covering managements ass will take the ax.

Good luck guys!!!!!!!

Re:24 bolts?

[dexter riley]

Middle manager? No, I don't manage anybody. I'm just an employee who hopes that when I use a piece of equiptment, it will work as expected, and not crush/mangle/electrocute my ass! You don't document critical changes, oh, whenever you get around to it. You do it immediately after you make the changes, or in anticipation of the change, so the reactor doesn't spew acid through the missing gaskets, or the bus doesn't drive off with a missing brake line, or the multi-ton satellite doesn't fall on somebody. It IS the employee's responsibility to work according to protocol; if he doesn't, he's responsible for the consequences (and, as I said, if the supervisor allows shit like this to happen routinely, he should be fired as well). And yes, some protocols are unrealistic, but then he should tell his supervisor, and not just do whatever he wants.

If you don't like being ultimately responsible for the consequences of your actions, that's your business; but I sure as hell wouldn't want you working in the same company as me.

Do your goof ups have armed guards

[glassesmonkey]

How funny there is guards staring at this goof up until they figure out what to do with it.

What's up with building satellites FIVE years in advance. I understand it takes a long time at stuff.. but really, the technology will be so different by 2008. Hell, robots will be running things.

IM dialog....

[Blob Pet]

A conversation with my buddy Chris on this article...

Me: the satellite's name is NOAA-N Prime haha...it should have an autobot symbol

Chris: But the question is, what does it transform into?

Me: i think it's already in vehicle mode

Chris: Yeah, it damages its enemies by falling over on them and causing severe damage, according to the article

Chris: I'm not sure it deserves the title "autobot"

Chris: "NOAA-N Prime finally defeats the mighty Megatron by falling on its side on him. Megatron, not strong enough to lift NOAA-N Prime off of him, eventually gave up"

Bad Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just, what, a 20G decelleration? Heck, my laptop can survive more than that. Here, watch m

Personally, I find this re-assuring...

[FFFish]

...'cause it means that on the whole, no matter how bad a day I'm having, I can always remember: someone else had a far, far worse one.

Can anybody explain the accident more clearly?

[spitzak]

The first impression of the photo is that the satellite tipped completly over from vertical standing on that white framework on the right. You can see another satellite standing up in that position in the background.

However the description does not match this, it says it fell only three feet, from an apparently horizontal position.

What I can't see is what was holding it up in that position. Was that fixture (the "roll over cart") removed? Or is it hidden behind it, or attached to the "bottom" (now on the right edge) or what? How exactly did the missing 24 bolts not become noticed until it was in this horizontal position?

Just curious for more details. Other people's expensive mistakes are always fascinating!

Re:Can anybody explain the accident more clearly?

[Ahotasu]

I'll give it a go.

First, note that spacecraft (S/C) are rotated from vertical to horizontal positions very very slowly For smaller S/C, hand-cranked carts are used, but from the pictures, I think this one used a motor, which may have taken longer to "adjust" when the techs noted the problem (the S/C slipping from the plate before the fall).

In the photo you see on the linked page, the turn-over cart is the large white structure located on the far right of the picture. The large ring is the base where the 24 missing bolts should have been. This interfaces with (most likely, I'm guessing here) the S/C launch vehicle adapter ring, which is probably the slightly flared chrome-colored cylinder at the base of the S/C (again, on the right of the picture).

You can't tell from the picture posted, but I've seen pictures that show the ring is (only) roughly 5-10 degrees from horizontal. The ring itself, when horizontal is about 3 feet above the floor. Doubtless, what happened is that, as the plate (and therefore S/C) was rotated, the S/C started to slip off of the plate, striking the turn-over cart and then rotating over into its fatal dive.

This is similar to how other S/C are handled, at least in my experience. It is also interesting to note that some physical S/C moves are videotaped and have significant quality assurance checkoffs. This may be limited to lifts (think crane), and vibration tests, and not "simple" turn-over maneuvers, and I'd bet this isn't the first time this turn-over cart was used, nor the first time this S/C was turned. I wonder if there are videos floating around? I'd sure as heck find it interesting to see the turn-over procedure and see where they checked off the step saying "check bolts".

Re:Can anybody explain the accident more clearly?

[spitzak]

From your description, it really sounds like it did fall over from a nearly vertical position. And that is certainly what it looks like from the pictures. It slid off that flat white surface to the right.

The article text kind of implied that it only dropped 3 feet, as though it was horizontal and then the top dropped to the floor. Perhaps they were trying to minimize how bad it sounds.

photoshop?

[oni]

I feel sorry for the engineers who's work has been damaged, but I can't help but want to photoshop this. There is a desk complete with in-out boxes just to the left of the satellite. I think there needs to be a small pool of blood there to make this funny.

Bad news: we dropped a multi-million dollar satellite
Worse news: it landed on Phil, the only guy who knows how to fix it.

America's Funniest Home Videos

[chia_monkey]

That's aweful. And probably gonna be damn expensive to fix. But looking at the picture, all I can imagine is watching a kitten or something bump up against it, watch it knock over, and have Bob Saget saying something so horrifically annoying that all I want to do is wish I was underneath that thing.

Consecutive slashdot stories

[Smack]

Barnes and Noble Drops Ebooks
Lockheed Martin Drops NOAA Satellite

Hee.

One word...

[tellurian]

eBay

Project Status Messages

[Mr.Sharpy]

Vibration Test...Completed
Structural Load Test...Completed

Good to see they got those out of the way!