Zuma Investigation Pinpoints Payload Adapter in Launch Failure
The Wall Street Journal has an update into the failed launch of the classified Zuma payload in January. The spacecraft was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster.
Government and industry experts have tentatively concluded that engineering and testing errors by Northrop Grumman Corp. caused a U.S. spy satellite to plummet into the ocean shortly after a January launch, according to people familiar with the details.
…two separate teams of federal and industry investigators have pinpointed reasons for the high-profile loss to problems with a Northrop-modified part—called a payload adapter — that failed to operate properly in space….
The device, purchased from a subcontractor, was significantly modified and then successfully tested three times on the ground by Northrop Grumman, according to one person familiar with the process. But upon reaching orbit, this person said, the adapter didn’t uncouple the satellite from the rocket in zero-gravity conditions.
Sensors on board failed to immediately report what happened, this person said, so officials tracking the launch weren’t aware of the major malfunction until the satellite was dragged back into the atmosphere by the returning second stage. The satellite ultimately broke free but by then had dropped to an altitude that was too low for a rescue.
28 responses to “Zuma Investigation Pinpoints Payload Adapter in Launch Failure”
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Thanks for posting this!
I hope this gets as much press in “the media” as the initial reports that (mostly) seemed to point the finger at SpaceX.
It won’t, it was months ago, and 24hr news cycle
And all those a$$ clowns blaming SpaceX despite NASA/USAF LSPs not being concerned or any hint of a stand down at SpaceX should be properly mocked and excoriated.
All the News cycle talks about is Trump doing Stormy Waters http://henican.com/blog/sto…
Wait…..it isn’t 2021 quite yet.
It will get plenty of coverage. JC, man. Effing SpaceX is involved. Everything the company and Elon Musk do or are involved in gets boatloads of coverage. I’ve seen this story quoted all over the press already.
Given the costs involved, SX can sell more launches for test flights on their vehicles. $60 is cheaper than losing a payload. I’ll have to admit that in my estimation I mentally put it at 60:40 as being a SX issue. I’m glad it was not, and happy to see there’s not a background issue with Falcon. In a sense, other than the lost payload. There’s no loss here. SX would have been made to pay a heavy price if it were their fault. Northrup Grumman will pay a very small price, in fact they may be rewarded with another flight. And another issue I was wrong on, I really expected the government and NG to heap blame on SX for lack of process control in manufacturing and operations. If there’s a public report I’ll have to read it to see if that’s in there. It’ll be interesting in future Congressional hearing how certain Congressmen will spin this as they’ve been doing since Dec (whoops Jan!).
Given Zuma, recently, and JWST for over a decade, one wonders why more of an issue is not made about Northrop Grumman’s “process control in manufacturing and operations.”
NG is like a doctor who was a superstar in the 60’s, but hasn’t been in an O.R. in decades. SpaceX is the brash young Ben Casey-esque hotshot who’s been cranking out procedures left and right with an excellent success rate. Which would you choose to apply scalpel to your ailing giblets?
Medicine is not a good metric here. This is government aerospace done by a well endowed, lawyer’d, and lobbied for interest. Success or failure is not the final delimiter. Given the massive aerospace consolidation after the Cold War, it’s not like you can shut down a corporate board for making bad decisions. That said, some of the shops of NG have a lot of success in their record at the sub system level. That JWST is already over a decade late, massively over budget and very risky, is not a problem in the eyes of the folks in charge of the money. Systems like JWST and SLS are doing their jobs before they fly by providing jobs, and the flow of money. The flight is icing for the cake. I know you understand all this.
As for process, it’s a religion. Akin to the discussion between those who think you make it to paradise by your actions or whether you pray at 5am, don’t eat meat on Friday, and say the right prayers on the right days, and of course go to church. The ritual folks have held the day for a long time. Space X makes it to heaven skipping some of the details. It’s going to take THE CHURCH some time to get used to this. And it seems they are adapting. There’s a lot of change afoot, you’ve mentioned it in the past. It’s real, but it takes time esp when change goes against the established flow of money. I’m going to be watching the C-Span coverage of the various Congressional committee meetings to do some kremenlinology for the next few months. Should be interesting. Looking forward to some tet-e-te between SX and select reps from key Southern states. SX has been getting some very unjust ribbing the past 4 months.
Yes, we all understand the intrinsic waste and perverse incentives that have become normative with traditional cost-plus development and acquisition processes. That’s why all these bureaucratic barnacles must be done away with. And not just for space projects, but for defense projects as well. Right now, in terms of effectiveness in hobbling the U.S. military, I’d rate the extant mess in DoD development and acquisition as being higher, from the PRC’s point of view, than having three extra field armies or a half-dozen carrier battlegroups. This nonsense has got to stop.
I think it’s just part of the process of expanding economic activity into new realms. We’re seeing similar malfunctions in the tech industry with respect to ride sharing and social media. None of them are profitable but they’re soaking up investment money like crazy and support huge teams of people that deliver questionable but popular products. It’s one huge con job — until it’s not. We’re also seeing similar dynamics in economic sectors that are profitable. Look at A-380, 787, C-919, MC-21 and ARJ-21. All the airliners of the past decade, all massively over budget, all years late, and all having epic technical problems to one degree or another. We see the same thing with 5th generation combat aircraft F-22, F-35, Su-57, J-20. All had problems that made the airliners programs look enlightened. Of all the aviation programs only A-380, 787, F-22 and F-35 were technical successes and those were the programs that had money poured down their gullet. So far the solution seems to be brute force money. I’d love to see Musk put in charge of developing a combat aircraft, or an airliner. I’m not 100% convinced you could have a Space X for aviation. In a sense we see what a Musk led aviation effort would look like in Tesla. Which is less than the outcome of Space X.
The effects of the perverse incentives just get worse over time.
A significant contributory factor is also the radical decline in average management quality at the legacy majors. The main reason the 787 was such an unforced Charlie Foxtrot, for example, was that Boeing’s then-senior management decided to throw out pretty much all the lessons learned over eight decades of airliner programs in favor of chasing the flavor-of-the-month – in this case, outsourcing.
Many of the genius engineer-founders of the predecessor companies to today’s Big Three were still in charge in the 50’s and early 60’s. Then they died off or retired and were replaced by steadily lower-quality organization men. That process has now pretty much plumbed maximum test depth.
The old saying about rich families is “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” The legacy aerospace majors are today’s Magnificent Ambersons. The military-industrial complex is going to need to be burnt to the ground, the ashes sifted for usable nails, and a complete replacement built in its place.
I think it’s more complex than that, but I agree that what you say here is a real issue with us Americans. But the Chinese and Russians are being fed by some very effective intelligence agencies to cheaply give them the Americans hard won solutions to real world problems. Also consider the Chinese did not have a multi generation accumulation of culture to overcome, and the Russians got to clean shop. And I think this shows. Look at China’s Space X like launch rate, they’re doing old aerospace in a new way. And the Russians had a very good launch rate using a mafia-market/state management approach that had them on top from the mid 90’s to about 3 years ago. I think another axis in the problems vector space is the extreme level of complexity in design culture as computers and automation have dangled more possibilities in front of our face, and we don’t know how to balance the new gaps between our reach and our grasp.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
The new young turk has had a few goofs in the OR.
As dramatic as that video is, Falcon 9 has had only two primary mission failures (the above on pad failure and the in flight COPV failure on a Dragon mission) in over 50 launches. This is a good record for this industry. The argument that SpaceX is “less reliable” diminishes a bit with each additional launch success.
As Jeff said only 2 primary mission failures in over 50 launches is a very good record, especially without as much experience to fall back on, one of those (AMOS 6) was something no one knew could happen, and not really counted against them as a result, it was a learning experience for the entire industry.
The COPV failure was because SpaceX was pushing the envelope of sub-cooled LOX. One could argue they should have known not to use the unsealed side of a COPV tank on the LOX side. But at any rate, it is certainly a lesson learned for the industry.
SpaceX is almost certainly going to apply the same sub-cooling techniques with BFR to sub-cool both the LOX and methane. So, better to learn the lesson early on with Falcon 9 and an unmanned payload (which arguably shouldn’t have been mated until after the tanking test) than much later on either a manned Falcon 9 or a manned BFR.
Yes. For F9, the lesson solution was to redesign the helium tanks. For BFR the lesson solution was to do away with the helium tanks.
Granted. But his batting average is pretty good. More to the point, he’s pumped a lot of patients through that OR. The only patient NG has discharged after treatment flat-lined when barely out of the parking lot. JWST is still on the table. Let’s hope it’s outcome is better than Zuma’s.
NG builds a lot of satellites and satellite components for a lot of spacecraft that don’t get a NG name. They fly a lot. They know what they are doing most of the time.
Until they’re actually the ones in charge and the price tag rises past nine figures apparently.
Don’t compare Payloads to launchers. That is like comparing Surgeons to Ambulance companies. If the City Fire/EMS is very old school, 1950’s in mentality and filled with Union workers pulling 3X pay for working Sunday Christmas Eve, they may still be better then AMR which forgot to stow a patient’s stretcher and dumped them out the back into traffic where they got run over… The OR surgeon’s may be killing people with poor surgical technique, but, it’s the job of the ambulance crew to get the patient alive to the hospital.
The “ambulance” in this case – Falcon 9 – did get the “patient” to the “hospital” (orbit). Trouble is, the patient’s family handcuffed him to the ambulance bumper and he got dragged to death on the return run.
The full article goes on to say that the payload was “particularly vulnerable to shock and vibration” so the adapter had been modified to cushion the separation forces.
Which may explain why Zuma was on a Falcon 9 in the first place. Said payload was rumored to be both large and heavy. If it was also unusually delicate, perhaps neither Delta IV nor Atlas V could have launched it without needing SRB’s – and the concomitant rough ride.
If an even more squishy, land-yacht-ish ride was needed than F9 provides in standard trim, I’m sure SpaceX could have modified its own payload deployment hardware to suit. The standard F9 payload adapter is already pyro-free, for example.
One hopes – though probably in vain, given human cussedness – that these legacy contractors would, in future, be a bit more circumspect about claiming credit for the decades-past achievements of their predecessor companies and simply acknowledge that the center of gravity of relevant and recent experience in all things space is now located at 1 Rocket Road in Hawthorne, CA. Refusal to take full advantage of said resource amounts to aerospace engineering malpractice IMHO.
Yes. They really need to be considering how to leverage the capabilities of the new launch systems.
The Delta IV Heavy, flies a triple liquid core. It’s higher performance then the Falcon 9 and it’s pretty soft of a ride.
If DoD opted for F9 it was a cost saving idea
It was Northrop Grumman that actually made the launch deal with SpaceX, not DoD directly. But, yeah, even with all the government hoop-jumping and triplicate forms an F9 launch only costs Uncle Sam $90 – 100 million. The D-IV Heavy starts somewhere around $400 million.
I’m guessing if NG had screwed the payload adapter pooch in exactly the same way on a D-IV H mission we probably would not have seen the same initial feeding frenzy to blame the loss on the launch vehicle. Doesn’t advance the narrative.
Andy Pasztor. What a mensch.