WASHINGTON -- The multi-billion dollar International Space Station (ISS) is carrying parts that did not receive adequate testing, yet NASA was given a bill and a thumb's up that the components were okay to fly.
Special agents of NASA's Office of Inspector General (IG), along with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uncovered the space scam. The outcome has been an indictment July 18 of a NASA subcontractor and the company's president on 36 counts of mail fraud.
The company, Test Lab, N.A., Inc. of Woburn, Massachusetts, provided testing services for NASA, through the space station prime contractor, Boeing, for numerous parts currently in use on the Russian portion of the ISS.
The charges allege that Test Lab, its President and Vice President, devised a scheme to defraud customers by certifying that testing had been completed and billing customers for the testing.
According to a July 25 statement from the NASA IG, the team of investigators found that many of the parts were not tested at all, or only partially. The charges allege that as much as 10 to 20 percent of the parts received by Test Lab from 1995 until October 1999, were not tested in whole or in part. Test Lab received at least $300,000 from customers for services not rendered.
Command and control electronics
"They were electronic components and they are now in use within the Russian segment," said William Miller, resident agent in charge in the IG office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "They were used in the command and control modules, and are viewed by NASA as critical parts within the Russian portion of the space station," he told SPACE.com
Miller emphasized that the actual purchase of these parts were not one of the purchases that the U.S. Attorney's office decided to include in the actual criminal indictment, Miller said. "We had some evidence that there was some funny business going on with these parts, but we didn't include them in the indictment because we didn't have as much evidence as we had on other parts," he said.
NASA paid Boeing to purchase the parts, with the components then provided to Russia by the space agency for use in the Russian space station portion, Miller said.
Safety risk assessment
"I think it's a serious safety risk any time you put parts into any space vehicle that weren't tested as you contracted. NASA tests these parts for a reason. It's very expensive to go back to space station and replace parts," Miller told SPACE.com.
Miller said the IG is working with NASA to get them access to all the paperwork in hand so the agency can decide if there is a true safety risk. "That's the number one concern we have," he said.
A Federal Grand Jury in U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, in Boston, Massachusetts was the location of the indictment.
If convicted, the Test Lab officials face a maximum penalty on each count of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, three years of supervised release, and restitution. Test Lab faces a maximum penalty on each count of a $500,000 fine, restitution, and probation.
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