Shuttle O-Rings Are Sabotaged, NASA Reveals

NASA officials revealed today that up to seven crucial O-ring seals used in space shuttle boosters appear to have been sabotaged earlier this summer but said the damaged seals never made it out of the factory and never threatened an actual flight.

“We are absolutely sure we don’t have any bad stuff in any hardware, both test hardware or flight hardware,” said Royce Mitchell, a booster project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Investigation Under Way

The FBI, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and HydraPak Inc., the company that makes O-ring seals for the space shuttle boosters, are investigating the apparent sabotage at the manufacturing plant.

Cal Clegg, spokesman for the FBI Salt Lake City office, confirmed today the agency is “conducting an official inquiry. I can’t say more than that because there is an ongoing investigation.”

Morton Thiokol Inc., manufacturer of the shuttle boosters, gets the crucial O-ring seals from HydraPak of West Jordan, Utah.

Mitchell said the first instance of vandalism was noticed in June and that an investigation was quickly launched.

“In the processing of O-rings (at HydraPak) June 16, they discovered an O-ring that had a deliberate cut in it,” he said by telephone from Morton Thiokol’s booster plant near Brigham City, Utah. “And it was not subtle. It was a cut.

“They found another one the next day and a third one on June 23. These are apparent, deliberate cuts. Also, there were four O-rings in a curing oven, and the oven was turned up too high and the appearance is that it was done deliberately. That gets to be a little bit harder to nail down.”

Overheating the O-rings during the curing process would have made them lose resiliency, which is crucial to their ability to seal booster joints.

“We instituted very rigorous security on how O-rings are packaged and protected,” Mitchell said, adding that such damage could not escape standard detection procedures. “We are very confident we don’t have any bad hardware anywhere in the program.”

Trouble with vandalism has cropped up before. In January, an O-ring seal in a test booster at the Thiokol plant apparently was deliberately damaged after the rocket had been fired, Mitchell said.