THE BEHREND BEACON English-Metric mix-up is blamed for loss of Mars Orbiter by Robert Lee Hotz Los Angeles Times NASA lost its $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from En glish to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday, September 30th. A navigation team at the Jet Pro pulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Ca lif., used the metric system of milli meters and meters in its calculations while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which designed and built the spacecraft. provided crucial accel eration data in the English system of inches, feet and pounds. As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called new ton-seconds. In a sense. the spacecraft was lost in translation "That is so dumb," said John Logsdon. director of George Wash ington University's Space Policy In stitute. "There seems to have emerged over the past couple of years a sys tematic problem in the space commu nity of insufficient attention to de tail." The loss of the Mars probe was the latest in a series of major space flight failures this year that destroyed billions of dollars worth of research, military and communications satellite or left them spinning in useless orbits. Earlier last month, an independent na tional security review concluded that many of those failures stemmed from an overemphasis on cost-cutting, inis- CIA unable track Russian by Roberto Suro The \Vashinuton Post WASHINGTON -- In a new assess ment of its capabilities. the Central In telligence Agency has concluded that it cannot monitor low-level nuclear tests by Russia precisely enough to ensure compliance with the Compre hensive Test Ban Treaty. which the Senate will begin debating this week, senior officials said Saturday. Twice last month the Russians car ried out what might have hccn nuclear explosions at their Novaya "Zemlya testing site in the Arctic. But the CIA found that data from seismic sensors and other monitoring equipment were insufficient to allow analysts to reach a firm conclusion about the nature of the events, officials said. The Russian government has as sured the Clinton administration that the tests involved only conventional explosives and that it has not violated its promises to abide by the unratified treaty, which prohibits nuclear tests. Senior congressional staffers were briefed on the new CIA assessment before Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. R-Miss., last Thursday abruptly scheduled a vote on the test ban treaty after having refused to bring it to the floor since President Clinton sent it to the Senate for ratification two years ago. Lou vowed to defeat the treaty he cause it endangers national security. Clinton has promised an all-out fight for ratification of what he depicts as a landmark arms control pact. Republicans and Democrats pre dicted Saturday that the ClA's ability to monitor low-level tests will be a major issue in the debate leading up to a vote that could take place as early as Oct. 12. Senior intelligence offi cials, including possibly Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, will begin briefing senators on the monitoring issue Monday, sources said. Ratification of a treaty requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and by all accounts the Democrats, who hold 45 seats, are far short of the required 67 votes. The treaty has been signed WORLD AND NATION management, and poor quality control at Lockheed Martin. which manufac tured several of the malfunctioning locket, But National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials and Lockheed executives said it was too soon to apportion blame for the most recent mishap. Accident review pan els convened by JPL and NASA are still investigating why no one detected the error. "It ‘l , a`, launched that ‘‘ ay. - said Noel Hinners, vice president for Hight systems at Lockheed Martin's space systems group. "We were transmitting English units and they were expect ing metric units. The normal thing is to use metric and to specify that. - None of JPL's rigorous quality control procedures caught the error in the nine months it took the spacecraft to make its 461 million-mile night to Mars. Over the course of the journey. the miscalculations were enough to throw the spacecraft so far off track that it flew too deeply into the Mar tian atmosphere and was destroyed when it entered its initial orbit around Mars last week. John Pike, space policy director at the Federation of American Scientists, said that it was embarrassing to lose a spacecraft to such a simple math er ror. "It is very difficult for me to imag ine how such a fundamental, basic dis crepancv could have remained in the system for so long. - he said. "I can't think of another example of this kind of large loss due to En glish vs. metric confusion. - Pike said. "It is going to he the cautionary tale until the end of time.'' At the Jet Propukion Lk, which b) 154 nations. including the United States. hut it has been ratified by only 47 countries, most recently Bulgaria on Wednesday. More significantly. the treaty has been ratified only 23 of the 44 nuelear-capahle countries that must confirm It for the treaty to take effect. Although the U.S. intelligence community has a long-standing con cern about the difficult% of gathering data on low-level nuclear tests, the re cent Russian tests -- and others like it earlier this ear -- prompted the CIA re-evaluation. As a result. the agency formed a ne \A. assessment that these "Without the treaty, the problem of assess ing these kinds of events undoubtedly exists, but the question you have to ask is whether the treaty would leave us better off or worse, and inarguably we would be better off" events fall into a gray area where it can not reliably distinguish between a con ventional explosion and a low-level nuclear test or even natural seismic acti‘ ity, officials said. U.S. officials said that assessment is not a dramatic departure from earlier CIA positions hut rather a refined judgment about its ability to deal with a subject that is in herently uncertain. "Without the treaty, the problem of assessing these kinds of events un doubtedly exists, hut the question you have to ask is whether the treaty would leave us better off or worse, and inar guably we would be better off, - na tional security adviser Sandy Berger said in an interview Saturday. Under the treaty, an international monitoring system would he put in place with ca pabilities exceeding those that the United States and it allies can field to day, and signatories would have the right to request on-site inspections of testing facilities, ensuring that compli- owes its international reputation to the unerring accuracy it has displayed in guiding spacecraft across the shoals of space, officials did not flinch from acknowledging their role in the mis take. "We know this error is the cause," said Thomas R. Gavin, deputy direc tor of JPL's space and Earth science directorate, which is responsible for the JPL Mars program. "And our fail ure to detect it in the mission caused the unfortunate loss of Mars Climate Orbiter. "When it was introduced and how it was introduced we don't know yet,- Gavin said NASA officials in Washington, D.C., were reluctant to blame either Lockheed Martin or JPL solely for the problem, saying the error arose from a broader quality control failure. "People make mistakes all the time, - said Carl Pilcher, the agency's science director for solar system ex ploration. "I think the problem was that our systems designed to recog nize and correct human error failed us. "We don't see any connection be tween this failure and anything else going on at Lockheed Martin, - Pitcher said. "This was not a failure of Lockheed Martin. It was systematic failure to recognize and correct an er ror that should have been caught. In any event, scientists are anxious that the conversion error does not af fect a second spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lamle,. now approaching the red planet for a landing on Dec. 3. The lost orbiter would have served as a radio relay for the lander before be- ginning its Own two-year survey , of the Martian atmosphere and seasonal to precisely nuclear testing Lince can hc Nerilied. hc said While the administration argues that the treaty would provide new tools to detect testing that would help rem edy the weaknesses in U.S. capabili ties, Republican leaders contend that the treaty is worthless unless the United States can ensure compliance on its own. because Russia. China and other nations have a history of denial and deception on nuclear testing. During a speech to the Senate on Friday declaring his opposition to the treaty. Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, R-Va., said that the recent history of Russian test- -Sandy Berger, national security advise' ing activity had to he taken into ac count. "There is a body of fact devel oped over the past 18 months that it will he imperative for every senator to examine before deciding how to vote," Warner said in an interview. That in formation would he made available to the Senate during briefings and hear ings this week, Warner said. According to a military intelligence assessment that has circulated widely at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community, over the past 18 months Russia has conducted tests in the gran ite caverns of Novaya Zemlya to de velop L, low-yield tactical nuclear weapon that is the linchpin of a new military doctrine to counter U.S. su periority in precision guided muni tions. In monitoring Novaya Zemlya, U.S. surveillance satellites have repeat edly observed the kind of activity that usually precedes and then follows a low-level nuclear test; in between, seis- OCTOBER 8, 1999 Martian atmosphere and seasonal weal het Data exchanges for the Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting Mars since 1997, have been con ducted exclusively in the metric sys tem, Hinners said. Mission control lers expect to use the Surveyor as a relay station in place of the lost or biter. If found formally at fault by an accident review board, Lockheed will face financial penalties. But it was not certain Thursday whether Lockheed's contract with JPL actu ally specified the system of mea surements to be used, as many aero space agreements now often do. sequences for the aerospace com pany, the loss of the Mars orbiter might have a lasting effect on pub lic confidence in NASA, space ana lysts said. Earlier this year, for example, NASA laced public concerns about its Cassini probe as it swung within a celestial hairsbreadth of Earth with an onboard cache of plutonium. The agency's matchless skill in navigat ing space helped defuse fears of a potentially lethal collision between Earth and the Cassini probe. Now that skill will be more open to question, analysts said Thursday. "It is ironic,'' Logsdon said, "that we can cooperate in space with the Russians and the Japanese and the French but we have trouble co operating across parts of the United States. Fundamentally, you have partners in this enterprise speaking di fforent languages.'' mic data that are gathered have been insufficient to allow a clear assess ment of what transpired, officials said. "We do not have any data that indicates a nuclear explosion during those events," said a senior admin istration official. The administration's position is that Russian President Boris Yeltsin has stood by his 1997 promise to conduct only "subcritical - tests, in which conventional explosives are detonated in the presence of nuclear materials as a way of testing exist ing nuclear weapons without creat ing a nuclear chain reaction. The United States, which stopped nuclear testing in 1992, also has used sub- critical tests to evaluate weapons Although some officials at the CIA and other intelligence agencies believe that Russia has repeatedly conducted nuclear tests in violation of Yeltsin's promise, the CIA does not claim to have conclusive data one way or the other. Indeed, it is uncer tainty about what is happening rather than an accusation of Russian mis behavior that is the key point of the CIA assessment, officials said. difficult to characterize in an exact ing manner. and that is a major chal lenge to the intelligence commu nity,- a senior U.S. official said. The administration is prepared to argue that the difficulty of monitor ing low-level tests is a major factor in favor of the treaty and its new glo bal monitoring system, but adminis tration officials are concerned that their message will take longer to get across than the stark suspicions of Russian motives that lie behind many Republican arguments. "It is unfortunate that after two years of inaction we now get a 12- day rush to judgment," Berger said. "We don't think this is a good treaty," Lott said Friday. "We think it would put us in a weakened posi tion internationally, but since there have been all these calls and de mands fora vote, we have offered to vote." Whatever the contractual con- Tests at these kinds of levels are Nuclear technicians employed illegal operations manual by Sonni Efron and Valerie Reitman Los Angeles Times TOKYO -- The uranium processing plant where Japan's worst nuclear ac cident occurred was using an illegal op erations manual that directed workers to save time by mixing a uranium solu tion in stainless steel buckets. and work ers had been performing that procedure --cited as one of the causes of Thursday's nuclear fission reaction -- for four or five years. company officials admitted Saturday. The revelations shocked Japan Sun day. "This is completely unforgivable. I have nothing else to say, - said Masaru Hashimoto. governor of I baraki prefec- lure, where the accident in the town of Tokaimura irradiated 49 people. This is outrageous, or rather it's insulting." "Unbelievable!" declared a Sunday morning television talk show. Plant owner JCO Co.'s head of manufacturing. Hiroyuki Ogawa, held a news conference Saturday at which he disclosed the existence of the manual, which had been revised in 1997 and had never been submitted for the required government approval. Ogawa said company officials were well aware that the illicit procedure. in which ura nium oxide was dissolved in a solution in stainless steel buckets. produced toxic emissions. "This is a safety problem, - Ogawa said. "We knew if we asked for formal approval, we would not get it.'' The Science and Technology Agency called the manual "illegal." The manual reportedly ordered workers to "prepare three clean stain less steel buckets, - and ()gawa said he had witnessed workers using such buckets to mix the uranium solution for four or five years. The procedure by passed the factory's elaborate system of preparing the uranium slowly, using a system of four different tanks con nected by pipes with metering devices attached to ensure that dangerous con centrations of uranium could not occur. Ogawa said the bucket method was used as a timesaver because it took just 30 minutes compared with the three hours needed to pipe the chemicals through the vats in the proper proce dure. One of the workers seriously in jured in the blast, Yutaka Yokokawa, 54, told police in an interview from his hospital bed Friday that the bucket pro cedure was used frequently, according to Japanese news reports. Hospital officials disclosed for the first time Saturday that two other work ers, Hisashi Ouchi and Masato Shinohara, had received more than le thal doses of radiation. Ouchi received 17 sieverts of radiation, Shinohara re ceived 10 sieverts, and Yokokawa was exposed to 3 sieverts. Seven sieverts is considered a lethal dose, and the expo sure standard for ordinary Japanese citi zens is 0.001 sievert at a time, accord ing to Japanese news reports. Ouchi, 35, was transferred to To kyo University Hospital on Saturday to receive a blood transfusion taken from a newborn's umbilical cord, in a pro cedure that doctors hoped would com pensate for his deteriorating ability to produce blood. Shinohara, 39, was also listed in critical condition. The Tokaimura accident is being considered the third worst in history, after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Is land nuclear disasters. However, on Saturday. Japanese officials permitted the last evacuees within a quarter-mile radius of the uranium processing plant to return to their homes and declared that the area around the plant is safe and that local crops, livestock and fish pose no health hazards. Other troubling details of how the accident could have occurred contin ued to emerge this weekend, as a host of other design and safety procedural violations were disclosed that altered the initial perception that irresponsible workers alone were to blame. Among other factors, the workers Thursday were handling an unusually high-grade and potentially dangerous kind of uranium without special train ing or safety procedures. They also al legedly violated even the company's secret, timesaving procedures by dumping the uranium solution from the huckets into a precipitation tank that held a large quantity of uranium from a day earlier, triggering the reaction. Moreover, once the accident oc curred, officials did not immediately report the radiation leakage, so that three firefighters who were sent to the plant arrived without protective gear and were also contaminated, the Asahi newspaper reported Sunday. It was not known how much radiation they re ceived. JCO officials were slow to respond to the nuclear fission reaction once it began, in part because all three of the factory's alarm hells began to ring si multaneously, making it impossible to immediately determine in what part of the plant the accident had occurred, the Asahi said. The plant reported the ac- "This is a safety problem. We knew if we asked for formal approval, we would not get it." -Hiroyuki Ogawa, Plant owner JCO Co.'s head of manufacturing cident by fax to Tokaimura officials at 11:54 a.m., 61 minutes alter the acci dent occurred, instead of telephoning authorities Even as the nuclear reaction was taking place, officials reportedly spent the extra time preparing a document in order to comply with a regulation that all nuclear accidents be reported in writing, the newspaper said. The accident has highlighted how loosely regulated the uranium process ing plant was. The three workers now hospital ized with radiation poisoning had not been licensed by the government to deal with nuclear fuel. Nor were they required to be. Apparently only a single individual in a company that handles nuclear material is required to obtain certification from the Science and Technology Agency. The men did have lower-level licenses that allowed them to work with dangerous, though non nuclear, materials. PAGE 8
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