When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule screamed its way through the upper atmosphere, it marked the first time the space agency had brought material from an asteroid back to Earth. Hundreds of thousands tuned into the September 24th live stream so they could watch the capsule land at the Utah Test and Training Range. But about ten minutes before the capsule was set to touchdown, keen eyed viewers may have noticed something a bit odd — when ground control called out that the vehicle’s drogue parachute was commanded to deploy…nothing seemed to happen.
Now NASA knows why it didn’t work as expected, and it ended up being the sort of Earthly problem that we’d wager a few in this audience have run into themselves from time to time.
Put simply, the label “main” was inadvertently used to mark both the device that deployed the drogue chute, and the pyrotechnic charge that was used to cut its line. During assembly these two connections got mixed up, so that when the capsule’s avionics commanded to parachute to deploy, it actually ended up cutting its cord while it was still stored in the spacecraft.
You can probably guess what happened next. At the altitude where the parachute was supposed to be cut away, the door popped open and the already disconnected chute simply flew off.
This could have been a mission-ending mistake, but thankfully, the return capsule ended up landing safely even without the use of its high-speed drogue chute. It turns out that the main parachute was sturdy enough that it was able to handle the faster than expected deployment velocity. By the time the capsule reached the ground it was going the intended touchdown speed, and the samples were recovered safely, though its speedy descent did mean it landed about a minute ahead of schedule.
We were eagerly watching as OSIRIS-REx reached out and snapped up some of Bennu in 2020, and now that the samples have been delivered into scientist’s hands, we’re that much closer to learning about the nature of these near-Earth asteroids.
The engineers must’ve breathed a sigh of relief after it landed safely anyways.
The ones who designed the main chute probably also high fived.
Task failed successfully. While the added redundancy in the spacecraft’s chute design proved beneficial, it also introduced extra weight.
It also introduced success.
Sometimes two wrongs do make a right.
Nasa has never heard of idiot proof connectors? Connector 1 ::: pins Connector 2 :: pins :)
On one of the rockets, they ended up making the cables to where they couldn’t reach to mix them up.
In Russia if part not fit, use bigger hammer!
https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/rocket-failure/roscosmos-official-proton-downed-due-upside-sensors/
LOL @ “required special tools … leaving noticeable damage on the sensor plate”
“On one of the rockets”
That was the Saturn V second stage. On a development flight:
After the first stage was jettisoned, the S-II second stage began to experience problems with its J-2 engines. Engine number two had performance problems from 225 seconds after liftoff, abruptly worsening at T+319 seconds. At T+412 seconds the Instrument Unit shut it down altogether, and two seconds later, engine number three also shut down. The fault was in engine two, but due to cross-connection of wires, the command from the Instrument Unit also shut down engine three, which had been running normally.
That is only done in cars.
But for rocket scientists every connector has to be the same and it fits both ways!
Adding more PhD’s, no matter how brilliant, can’t make up for not having a few career electricians. Because every project becomes exponentially harder if you have to reinvent every standard bit of idiot-proofing, and waste time arguing why it needs to be that way.
At least they didn’t install the G-sensor backwards this time as was done with the Genesis probe. As I watched the live feed from a high altitude NASA plane, control said “drogue deployment”, but I could see the capsule still tumbling and thought, “NOT again!”
Yeah bro forgot to number or letter code the mains
After having worked on some of the equipment that comes out of JPL, it’s a wonder the DSN doesn’t randomly burst into flames. It’s sad to think the “pinnacle” of exploration is run by monkeys.
” You can probably guess what happened next. ” Ya, someone got fired. They cant even get a chute to work correctly, and they want to go to mars, LOL!!!!
Who gets fired ?
The overall project manager ?
The person/team who designed the device ?
The person who decided to make the cable lengths the same ?
The person who selected the same connector for the one time use devices ?
The person who labelled the two cables as “main” ?
The person who physically connected the cables both marked main when assembling the device ?
The accountant who trimmed the funding to the bone.
And after you replace the scapegoat, who would have never made that mistake again, with a new body are you not just removing experience from a team.
The only person who should be fired is one who doesn’t learn from this mistake. Scapegoats not required.
Simples …. deny all of the above their ‘performance bonus’ and give them all a first warning. Then top up the guys on the main shute team who saved the day.
Well, then you could as well fire them instantly.
Nobody will want to team up with them in a project ever again, if they bear a fuzzy halo of doom.
Either someone has done something intentonally wrong, then it would be sabotage in a member of the executive – I’m sure there are rules for that.
Or someone has done something unintentonally wrong, then the controlling was too bad, and processes and procedures have to be changed.
I think it would probs boil down to processes and procedures like you said. NASA probs already have a stat for human error and should have something to catch those events. Checks and re-checks until the probablity of missing a key factor is minimised to an acceptable level.
Speaking from experience, that’s not the way it works. We all work together and sacrifice a ton to do the job, and humans make mistakes. No credible organisation works on a blame model, they assess the root cause of the mistake and find a way to avoid it in future through protocols and design rules.
“Who gets fired?…The accountant who trimmed the funding to the bone?”
Congress and the heads of NASA who waste 65% of the budget on SPAM in a can human spaceflight and want to waste huge sums (SLS = $4.2 BILLION PER launch) to beat China for national pride reasons (the claims of military use of the moon are pure BS when analyzed) to the lifeless, dusty ball orbiting the Earth where no human has been for over 50 years because even back then there was no scientific reason to NOT use robotic landers, but we didn’t for national prestige reasons. And as for now, when China eventually does land humans there simply say, “Welcome to the club we originated over 50 years ago.”
Book: The End of Astronauts: Robots are the Future of Exploration
Spot on.
“because even back then there was no scientific reason to NOT use robotic landers,”
The thing is that even the robotics experts within these organisations would not agree with this position, so it’s funny that that opinion exists externally.
Fire the Incose – registered systems engineer(s) – if there are any. If there aren’t, fire the programme director, or if he/she couldn’t emplace them due to financial constraint, the bid/proposal team.
NASA is pleased to announce the people who fired the people responsible for the failure, have been fired.
All staff replaced by trained llamas
Project manager is ultimately the responsible person. That is why he gets paid that sweet moolah and he has his own parking spot. For mistakes of that magnitude to happen, quality control was lacklustre to say the least, which ultimately is a cock up made by the proj. manager.
The fact that similar mistakes on wiring have been made repeatedly.
Indicates a larger issue. Not only are they not learning anything from their errors, but perhaps the techs lower down are actually using a work to rule attitude, in order to screw over the eggheads. Or the mistakes are swept under the table, and not really analyzed. In an oh simple stupid well we won’t do that again attitude.
Simple ideas that have been in the automotive industry for decades like non reversible, non interchangable connectors, redundant color coding, and simple double checks.
Seem long overdue.
Sounds like a classic KSP staging order error :D
What does KSP staging order error mean?
This is a job for Captain Hindsight!
Anybody else love how we get these great anecdotes from NASA to share with youngsters? Make sure you can’t mix up your wires, kids. And make sure you’re using consistent units, and make sure you thought about temperature dependence, …. Because NASA demonstrated what can happen if you don’t. ;)
Well I’m an old man who who watched (on black and white TV) launches from Mercury to Apollo including Neil making that first step. But this is the same agency that lost 2 mutli-billion Mars orbiters after the successes of Apollo. The first one had fuel valves that were rated for lunar area distances from the sun but not Mars due to the colder termperatures. (mind you the NASA of the seventies knew what to use to handle the temps on the Viking Missions). The second one the “rocket scientists” had half the team using English units and other team was using metrics. Not to mention the 14 astronauts they slaughtered with the shuttle. They handed out twice the funding to develop commerical human transport to the ISS to Boeing over SpaceX. You know how that’s turned out. NASA has become an impediment to developoing space exploration and yes our worthless congress is the bigget part of that problem. Turn the free market loose and we would already be back on the moon.
How is the free market not loose? This is the golden age of private space companies.
Exactly, there is literally nothing stopping a private industry getting to the moon. Safety oversight, sure, but we can all see how a little submarine rushing to the Titanic fared when they shed the dusty shackles of safety testing.
There is nothing wrong with management.
The engineers are also stellar.
It is the labels that caused themselves to be mis-configured!