The Worst Employee in History: His Mistake That Cost NASA $135,000,000

Crashing into work is one thing, but causing a multi-million dollar mess is another story.

That’s what happened when a NASA technician made a simple mistake that ended up costing a fortune.

NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have hired Lockheed Martin to build the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite – a $233 million project.

While the satellite was being assembled at the Lockheed Martin facility in California, disaster struck.

The satellite was moving from a vertical to a horizontal position when it fell from its cart one meter below and landed on a concrete floor.

Although no one was injured, the satellite was not so lucky.

It turned out that NOAA N-Prime (later known as NOAA-19) was badly damaged and would cost a bomb to repair.

Martin had to cover most of the repair costs losing what she could have made from the project.

And the US government had to pay the rest, which amounted to a whopping $135 million, according to NASA spokesman Dave Steitz.

“Lockheed Martin has voluntarily contributed to the rebuilding effort all profits previously earned and paid into the contract,” Steitz and Lockheed Martin Space Systems spokesman Buddy Nelson said.

An investigation into the accident ensued and the cause came down to something very trivial. It was revealed that the satellite was missing 24 bolts.

The bolts were needed to secure the piece of technology to a device called a Turn-Over Cart (TOC).

The bolts were removed from the TOC by another project while the cart was in a common staging area, an activity that was not shared with the NOAA project team,” a NASA report states.

Had these bolts been fitted the whole mishap might have been avoided.

Nelson added that at least 15 percent of the platform’s components had to be replaced.

“The company will undertake the completion of the N-Prime satellite shuttle on a cost-only basis, forgoing all profits that might otherwise have accrued to Lockheed Martin for this shuttle,” he continued.

The launch of the satellite was initially postponed to December 2007, but was not actually launched until February 2009.

But the incident led to improved and tighter security measures across Lockheed Martin’s satellite manufacturing programs to prevent a similar incident, Nelson said.

“The proof of our success is that our NASA and NOAA customers asked us to rebuild the NOAA N-Prime satellite,” he concluded.