A federal criminal probe is examining allegations of abuse by a former NASA official who abruptly resigned from his position at the agency in May, De Wall Street Journal reports. Lawyers are investigating when the official illegal information was revealed to Boeing about how to compete to build NASA’s new human lander, the report states.
The target of the probe is Doug Loverro, who was NASA’s associate director for human spaceflight for about six months. On May 19, Loverro suddenly left NASA, just a week before two of the agency’s astronauts were set on a historic mission with SpaceX to the International Space Station. Then Loverro said he took a ‘risk’ earlier this year. “The risks we take, technically, politically, as well as personally, all have potential consequences if we misjudge them,” he wrote in a memo at the time. ‘I took it about once earlier in the year because I judged it necessary to pursue our mission. Now, on the balance of time, it is clear that I have made a mistake in that choice, for which I have only to bear the consequences. ‘
Rumors began to swirl that Loverro had misbehaved during NASA’s purchase of a new human landing system for the agency’s Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman to the surface of the moon. Last year, NASA published a call for private companies to submit designs for landers that astronauts could bring to and from the moon. Boeing, the heavyweight Boeing of aviation, reported a bid, and now investigators at the U.S. law firm in DC are investigating whether Loverro tried to give Boeing some help during the competition. Specifically, the probe examines whether Loverro provided crucial information about the tender to Jim Chilton, senior vice president of the space and launch division at Boeing, outside the established tender channels, the WSJ reports. According to the WSJ:
Mr. Loverro, who was not part of NASA’s official contractors, informed Mr. Chilton that the Chicago space giant was about to be eliminated from the competition based on cost and technical evaluations, according to some of the people . Within days, Boeing had submitted a revised proposal, they said. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration formally states that the bid changes came too late to be considered, and three other companies won contracts totaling nearly $ 1 billion in April.
Originally, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General sought these allegations, but now that OIG probe is pending as this new criminal develops, according to the WSJ. This investigation is still in its early stages and may not result in criminal prosecution. But if the allegations come true, it is possible that Loverro may have violated the Purchase Integration Act, which “prohibits the release of source selection and information on bidders for bids or proposals,” according to the Department of Justice.
Loverro apparently said he was trying to keep the procurement process smooth by “reducing the chance that the bidding process would be slowed down by potential challenges or appealing to the outcome,” he said. WSJ writes. Finally, NASA awarded final contracts to SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to further refine the designs for their land exposures. Boeing’s lack of a winner’s list was widely noted, as the company has long won major space flood hardware contracts for NASA. Boeing is the main contractor for the International Space Station and is currently building NASA’s next generation rocket, the Space Launch System, to take humans into deep space.
However, Boeing’s relationship with NASA has apparently been strained lately. The company is a key partner with NASA through the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which has commissioned Boeing and SpaceX to develop capsules that humans can take to and from the International Space Station. Boeing launched its capsule – the CST-100 Starliner – in an untested flight test to the station in December, but the mission had multiple software bells that prevented the car from actually reaching the ISS. NASA conducted an investigation into the botched mission, and came up with 80 corrective actions that Boeing should take with its Starliner program.
