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.
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