As Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla has struggled with production problems and slumping demand, his space venture SpaceX has performed relatively well. The company has hit a few noteworthy milestones over the last year or so, including the launch of its demo Crew Dragon and a successful launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket. It’s also faced some challenges, such as the explosion of a test Crew Dragon. Now, a fresh challenge awaits in the form of allegations that an engineer at one of SpaceX’s suppliers forged inspection reports on parts destined for SpaceX’s rockets. It’s a blow to SpaceX and to the revitalised US space programme. – Felicity Duncan

SpaceX rockets were imperiled by falsified reports, prosecutors say

By Maria Armental

(The Wall Street Journal) An engineer at an upstate New York company who was responsible for ensuring the quality of parts for Elon Musk’s space venture has been charged with falsifying inspection reports.
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James Smalley, who worked as a quality-assurance engineer at PMI Industries LLC in Rochester, is accused of forging inspectors’ signatures on at least 38 source inspection reports for space-vehicle parts purchased by Mr. Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX.

Mr. Smalley couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday. He is scheduled to appear Thursday before a federal court.

An audit carried out by SpaceX subcontractor SQA Services Inc. discovered falsified source-inspection reports for parts purchased for the construction of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, US Attorney James P. Kennedy Jr. of the Western District of New York said Wednesday.

In addition, the authorities said they identified at least 76 parts that were either rejected or never inspected by SQA but were shipped to SpaceX.

Some of the false source-inspection reports, according to prosecutors, were related to components that were to be used for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which launched from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 18, 2018.

“According to the criminal complaint, James Smalley took the act of forgery to a new level,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Buffalo Special Agent-in-Charge Gary Loeffert said. “A potentially catastrophic level with the potential to not only cost millions of dollars, but also jeopardise years of irreplaceable work.”

Records furnished by SpaceX identified seven NASA space flight missions that were affected by parts that Musk’s company purchased from PMI, according to prosecutors.

“The success of America’s reinvigorated space program depends not just on American ingenuity but on American integrity as well,” Mr. Kennedy said.

– Write to Maria Armental at [email protected]