NASA Assures Congress Orb-3 and SpX-7 Investigations Are Similar

NASA told Congress this week that it is not giving SpaceX special treatment in the investigation of the Orb-3 and SpX-7 launch failures, but that the investigations are quite similar.  It said the perception that NASA’s role in studying the SpaceX failure is less intense is the result of a misunderstanding.

House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote to NASA earlier this month asking a series of questions about NASA’s role in finding the causes of the two failures:  the October 28, 2014 failure of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket with a Cygnus capsule loaded with supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) and the June 28, 2015 failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon capsule also full of supplies for the ISS.  Both launches were under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract between NASA and the two companies.  The Antares/Cygnus launch was Orbital’s third CRS launch, Orb-3.   SpaceX’s launch was its seventh under the CRS contract — SpaceX CRS-7 or SpX-7.

As commercial launches, they were licensed by the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and the accident investigations conducted pursuant to AST regulations.  Accordingly, the companies themselves are in charge of the investigations, not the FAA or NASA.

Smith basically wanted to know why NASA set up an Independent Review Team (IRT) in the wake of the Orb-3 accident, but did not for SpX-7 and whether that implied that SpaceX was being given preferential treatment.

NASA’s August 24 response, signed by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, was that although it may not seem so on the surface, NASA’s handling of both launch failures is similar.   The major difference is that Orbital Sciences (now Orbital ATK following a merger with ATK earlier this year) is only providing Antares launch services to NASA under the CRS contract while SpaceX’s Falcon 9 may also be used for other NASA launches, such as the upcoming launch of the Jason-3 ocean altimetry satellite, under a different NASA contract, NASA Launch Services II (NLS II).  Furthermore, Falcon 9 will be used for SpaceX’s launches of crew to the ISS under the commercial crew program.  Antares will not.

Bolden’s argument is that NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP), which administers the NLS II contract, and commercial crew program have sufficient insight into SpaceX’s activities to satisfy the function of an IRT.

NASA chose to establish an IRT for the Orb-3 failure and “[w]hile it may not have been as visible, we chose to do a similar thing for the SpaceX failure, conducting an independent review, but using existing mechanisms that were already in place,” Bolden wrote.  Because of this “misunderstanding,” many of the questions posed by Smith were “written under an incorrect premise….”

The five page letter, plus enclosures, goes on to respond to the “spirit of those questions,” concluding that NASA is, in fact, conducting independent reviews of both failures and of the Orbital ATK and SpaceX “approaches to return to flight.”  One of the enclosures is an August 3 memorandum for the record from NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, stating that “I have been closely observing the inclusion of NASA in the [Falcon 9 failure] investigation and have determined that NASA LSP should serve the function of an independent review team for NASA for this investigation.”

Orbital ATK determined that a malfunction of the NK33/AJ-26 Russian rocket engines on Antares caused the Orb-3 failure, although the official report has not been released yet.  It will use a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket for its next Cygnus cargo launch (OA-4) to ISS in December.  Antares is expected to return to flight, outfitted with different Russian rocket engines, in March 2016. 

SpaceX made a preliminary finding that the SpX-7 failure was due to a bad strut in the rocket’s upper stage, but the investigation is ongoing and the company has not announced when the Falcon 9 will return to flight or what it will launch.   SpaceX has a long list of customers, both commercial and government, for Falcon 9 launches. 

The next Falcon 9 NASA launch is Jason-3, which was supposed to go in July after several earlier satellite-related delays.   During a media telecon today on NASA’s studies of sea level rise, JPL’s Josh Willis said the launch could take place later this year or early next, depending on when the Falcon 9 resumes service.  He said the launch would take place as soon as possible, but only when it can be done safely.  Jason-3 is a cooperative program between NOAA and Europe’s EUMETSAT, with participation by NASA and its French counterpart, CNES.  NASA and CNES built the first two in the series and a predecessor, Topex-Poseidon.