spacetoday.net: Justice Department reaches deal with company implicated in Taurus failures

Posted: Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 8:54 AM ET (1254 GMT)
Taurus XL launch of OCO (NASA)

The Justice Department has reached a settlement with a company implicated in two Taurus launch failures. The department said that Hydro Extrusion Portland, Inc., formerly known as Sapa Profiles Inc., and its parent company agreed to plead guilty to one could of mail fraud and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement on another charge for falsifying test data for aluminum extrusions it produced. That scheme made it appear that components passed materials testing when in fact they failed those tests. NASA alleges that frangible joints that used those aluminum extrusions caused failures of two Taurus launches in 2009 and 2011 of NASA satellites when the payload fairings failed to separate. The companies will pay more than $45 million to government agencies, including NASA, as part of the agreement.