Pre-launch oversight doomed Genesis

Report: Test would have shown error in installing switches

Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 14, 2006 at midnight

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Lockheed Martin engineers failed to do a critical pre-launch test that would have uncovered the flaw that doomed NASA's $264 million Genesis capsule, investigators conclude in a 231-page final report issued Tuesday.

The test would have revealed that four tiny switches designed to trigger the release of the Colorado-built capsule's parachutes in September 2004 were installed backward.

The installation error, combined with the omitted test and other pre-launch oversights, sealed the fate of the blunt-nosed capsule, according to the Genesis Mishap Investigation Board. The canceled test was reported in January by the Rocky Mountain News and Space.com.

Because its parachutes failed to deploy, the Genesis capsule slammed into the Utah salt flats at 193 mph on Sept. 8, 2004. Its scientific cargo - silicon wafers etched with billions of microscopic bits of the sun's atmosphere - shattered. Even so, project scientists said they will accomplish most of their major science objectives.

Overall, the board's final report gives the impression of a Genesis team that tried to accomplish too much too quickly, with inadequate staffing and not enough funding.

"There was a lot of stress on the team," said Michael Ryschkewitsch, chairman of the investigation board. "People didn't really have time to go back and double-check things or think things through again and make sure that all the right things had been done."

As a result, the team at Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County and at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory relied too heavily on the unquestioned use of "heritage hardware," spacecraft components that have flown on previous missions, the report concludes.

In this case, the design for the parachute-release system on the Genesis capsule was borrowed from Stardust, another Lockheed Martin-built NASA probe built about two years before Genesis. Stardust successfully returned comet dust to Earth in January.

"Unfounded confidence in heritage designs in general led to five errors that contributed to the mishap," according to the report.

Those errors included a decision to rely largely on Stardust design drawings - instead of conducting a centrifuge test in the laboratory - to verify that the Genesis capsule's four tiny G-switch sensors were properly installed.

Lockheed Martin declined a request for interviews with Genesis engineers Tuesday.

But the company issued a statement saying it is reviewing the final report "and will implement any changes that have not already been accomplished."

"The Genesis mission serves to again remind us just how demanding space exploration always is and how exact our efforts must be," according to the company statement.

The report recommends increased oversight of spacecraft testing programs to catch mistakes.

And it faults NASA for "encouraging and accepting" the so-called faster, better, cheaper approach to robotic space exploration championed by former agency Administrator Dan Goldin. The philosophy encouraged increased risk-taking in order to cut costs.

"I don't think the people working on Genesis believed they were cutting corners," said Mike Luther, a NASA associate administrator.

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