A man will be serving 21 months in prison and be forced to pay back nearly $800,000 in fines after getting caught trying to pass off low-quality parts to NASA by forging over 190 documents
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Florida man Steven Lukens was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for defrauding NASA’s Space Launch System.
Lukens was also ordered to forfeit $271,024.35 and pay restitution of $689,280.03 after pleading guilty to wire fraud earlier this year.
Lukens, 54, from Port Charlotte, pled guilty to wire fraud related to NASA’s space launch system at the Kennedy Space Center. As the CEO of Gulf Atlantic International Supply, LLC, Lukens entered into a subcontract with another company to obtain materials for the space launch system.
A probe into his work revealed that Lukens submitted at least 190 fraudulent documents, including Certificates of Compliance, Pressure Testing certificates, and test reports.
“Ensuring the integrity of NASA’s component procurements and quality control is a top priority for the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG),” declared Robert Steinau, Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at NASA-OIG.
“This case highlights the OIG’s dedication to collaborating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate and prosecute companies that defraud NASA.”
The DOJ stated that these products were intended to support platforms for the Artemis mission and Orion, a spacecraft designed to take astronauts to the moon and eventually Mars.
He was tasked with providing parts for hyperbolic systems, which are hazardous liquids that are highly reactive, leading to fires, explosions, and toxic human exposure. However, he submitted forged quality control documents, supplying NASA with products that didn’t meet the contract’s strict standards and specifications.
The NASA Office of Inspector General investigated this case. It is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Rachel Lyons, with assistance from Assistant United States Attorney Shannon Laurie.
Meanwhile, NASA said during a press conference on Saturday that the American astronauts who became stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) won’t be returning to Earth until early 2025 — confirming fears that they might be stranded in space for the next six months.
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore are now slated to return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon flight in February 2025, eight months after they were sent into orbit on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft, slated to return after just eight days.
The two became stranded after the propulsion system on the Starliner malfunctioned, making it unsafe for the pair to return to Earth after their weeklong mission as planned. So, they became an integrated part of the ISS, helping with tasks and repairing certain parts of the orbiting structure.
After a successful test mission without pilots on board in 2022, the craft was dubbed safe enough for astronauts to ride it to the ISS. But while the mission in 2022 was successful and went off without a hitch, a previous mission without people in 2019 failed drastically. And the mission earlier this year also failed — standing Williams and Wilmore for months. They’ve already been in space two months longer than they should have been.
NASA announced that it would be returning Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without both astronauts. The agency said it would gather test data from the device during its solo flight home and minimize the risk for the astronauts.
Source: themirror
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