Northrop Grumman Blamed for Loss of Mysterious Zuma Spy Satellite

George Dvorsky
Today 4:20pm Filed to: NORTHROP GRUMMAN

The loss of a multi-billion-dollar satellite this past January is being attributed to engineering and testing errors made by aerospace and defense firm Northrop Grumman Corporation, according to a recently concluded investigation.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, a payload adapter modified by Northrop Grumman failed to operate properly during deployment, causing the $3.5 billion satellite to stay attached to the second stage Falcon 9 rocket during its descent stage. After a brief period in space, the spy satellite re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, likely splashing down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Such is the preliminary finding from two separate and independent teams of federal and industry investigators, according to the WSJ. No publicly available report detailing the cause of the malfunction has been released, nor is it known if a report is even forthcoming.

SpaceX, the private firm that provided the Falcon 9 rocket for the mission, was subsequently absolved by these findings, though the rocket company was never really considered culpable (that said, SpaceX made comments after the failed mission without the prior approval of US intelligence experts, which didn’t look good). The Falcon 9 performed as expected, but the company’s proprietary payload adapter was not used for the deployment. Instead, the adapter was sourced by Northrop Grumman from a subcontractor, extensively modified, and then tested three times on the ground. Once in space, however, the adapter failed to release the satellite. As the WSJ reports:

Sensors on board failed to immediately report what happened... so officials tracking the launch weren’t aware of the major malfunction until the satellite was dragged back into the atmosphere by the returning second stage. The satellite ultimately broke free but by then had dropped to an altitude that was too low for a rescue.

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