NASA Finally (Sort of) Releases DART Failure Report

NASA Releases DART Accident Report Summary

NASA Report: Overview of the DART Mishap Investigation Results – For Public Release

“In the case of DART, a lack of training and experience led the design team to reject expert advice because of the perceived risks involved in implementing the recommendations. In turn, this led to inadequate navigation system design and testing.” … “For the DART mishap, the MIB determined that there was an inadequate, system-level integration process, which failed to reveal a number of design issues contributing to the mishap” …”The MIB determined that one of the root causes of the mishap was an inadequate GN&C software development process.” … “Schedule pressure was identified as the cause for the inadequate testing of a late change to the navigation logic’s gain setting.” … “In the case of DART, the MIB concluded that insufficient technical communication between the project and an international vendor due to perceived restrictions in export control regulations did not allow for adequate insight.” … “The MIB determined that in several instances, the NASA DART insight team failed to identify issues that led to the mishap because of an inadequate assessment of project technical risk and insufficiently-defined areas of responsibility.” … “The MIB noted cases where the DART team failed to fully use the resources of available subject matter experts.” … “The MIB concluded that internal checks and balances used by DART’s prime contractor failed to uncover issues that led to the mishap, such as the undersized spherical envelope surrounding the AVGS range transition waypoint.”

Editor’s note: Yikes! ITAR issues aside, it is obvious why NASA sat on this report for a year – it has a high embarassment coefficient.