NASA Satellites Get 'Counterfeit' Parts; Taxpayers Pay

March 7, 2009 — -- Maybe it was something he didn't mean to say. Or maybe NASA has a problem.

At a House subcommittee hearing on NASA's cost overruns, the agency's acting administrator, Christopher Scolese, was asked why it is that so many space projects fail to stick to their budgets.

He listed a variety of reasons, including management mistakes, bad planning or the sheer complexity of missions that have never been tried before.

And then he said, as one extra point, that some spacecraft are built with parts that turn out to be "counterfeit."

Counterfeit? Ears in the room perked up.

"In dealing with that, you find out late, typically, when you get counterfeit parts," said Scolese.

Sometimes, he said, "you find out about it when you're in tests, or you find out about it when you're sitting on top of the rocket, or worse, you find about it when you're in space. And all of those have cost implications."

So NASA was faced with a sudden brush fire. Were satellites being launched with parts that might doom them to failure? Were astronauts in danger?

NASA insists the answer is no. But there have been cases in which it says companies have supplied it with parts or materials that were not what had been originally promised.

The most recent case involves NASA's Kepler probe, which was a day from scheduled liftoff when the hearing was taking place Thursday morning. Engineers built Kepler to spend at least three years in solar orbit, with a powerful camera to look for evidence of Earth-like planets circling other stars.

Last fall, a supplier was indicted for selling falsely approved titanium to NASA and the U.S. Air Force -- including the metal for Kepler's camera mount. That did not necessarily mean the titanium was in danger of failing, but the company had allegedly falsified its records to say it had done all the necessary tests.

"We analyzed the mount for about three weeks," said J.D. Harrington, a spokesman for NASA, "and we found the titanium to be well within performance requirements."