Northrop Grumman Revises Satellite Procedures After Telescope Delay

By Andy Pasztor

Northrop Grumman Corp. has implemented major changes in satellite production as a result of its previously disclosed mistakes building NASA's troubled James Webb Space Telescope, according to people familiar with the details.

The new practices, these people said, include stepped-up quality-control checks and enhanced training in an effort to lock in tighter testing procedures and prevent employee burnout. They come after NASA earlier this week announced a roughly one-year schedule slip on the long-troubled space project, to around May of 2020 from summer 2019.

The revisions are expected to affect practices at Northrop Grumman, a major supplier of commercial and defense space systems, significantly beyond its work for NASA, according to some industry and government officials.

Extra personnel costs are anticipated to add at least $200 million to the Webb program's overall development costs, which could put it over the $8 billion cap approved by Congress, one of the knowledgeable people said.

Congress has pledged to re-evaluate the project if its budget exceeded that total. In addition, some lawmakers are already critical of Northrop Grumman's performance.

Neither Northrop Grumman nor National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials have publicly indicated the likely financial impact of the procedural fixes and additional hardware testing.

On Thursday, a Northrop Grumman spokesman declined to comment, reiterating an earlier statement that the company "remains steadfast in its commitment to NASA and ensuring successful integration, launch and deployment."

A NASA spokesman pointed to statements by agency officials during a press briefing Tuesday.

When NASA announced the schedule adjustment -- the third major delay in seven years -- senior agency officials were uncharacteristically critical of what they called "avoidable errors" by Northrop. Moreover, the announcement was unusual because details of the final timetable changes and agency positions weren't communicated to senior Northrop Grumman executives in advance, according to the knowledgeable people.

During the briefing, acting NASA chief Robert Lightfoot said "corrective actions taken by the project" are intended to "give us better insight into our management of future large space systems."

Since then, more specifics have emerged about the root causes of certain production lapses. Northrop Grumman workers installed 16 valves on the satellite's thrusters without relying on detailed instructions and in the process used the wrong cleaning compound, damaging the parts, said one of the knowledgeable people.

Resulting leaks required a subcontractor to refurbish the valves, followed by another time-consuming process to replace and retest them. It took roughly three months to complete the process, this person said.

When workers deployed a sun shield designed to protect the spacecraft's intricate gold, hexagonal-shaped mirrors in space, the operation took twice as long as expected and revealed dramatic shortcomings despite earlier successful tests with a one-third-scale replica.

Cables that pull the shield into shape "develop too much slack during the deployment, creating a snagging hazard," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for unmanned missions, told reporters Tuesday.

Several tears also appeared in the shield, according to one of the knowledgeable people, because of unexpected stresses stemming from workers' incorrectly attaching hooks and cables to the wrong holes.

Even before such blunders, NASA leaders had demanded a high-level management shakeup at Northrop Grumman in response to schedule slips for the project, this person added. Privately, company managers countered that years of delays were common for other large, complex government satellite projects.

Northrop Grumman argued some of its delays reflected joint NASA-contractor decisions made years earlier to hold off developing and testing certain elements of the space observatory to give the agency extra dollars and time to complete work on its portion, one of the people familiar with the process said.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 30, 2018 14:36 ET (18:36 GMT)

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