Twice in the past decade, NASA launched unmanned spacecraft ferrying advanced satellites into Earth's orbit as part of a mission that could offer researchers an unprecedented new source of data on climate change.

But the satellites failed to deploy and, within minutes, NASA's $550 million investment and years of work vaporized in fiery balls of space junk.

NASA has been investigating ever since. Now the inquiry has led to a nondescript industrial building in Northeast Portland, where a company called Sapa Extrusions acknowledges it has been dealing in bad aluminum and bad faith for as long as two decades.

The company concedes its Portland operation systematically concealed failed quality tests and altered test results so parts that didn't meet strength requirements were sold into the marketplace, including to NASA. The Norway-based multinational company acknowledged the ongoing investigation in its last annual report and notified customers of the altered tests in late 2015.

The U.S. Department of Justice contends that 251 Sapa customers, which include transportation companies, automakers and builders, bought $6.8 million worth of product that failed to meet quality standards.

It remains unclear whether Sapa parts caused the failed NASA missions.

But the case took a dramatic turn last week when a former Sapa lab manager pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in U.S. District Court in Portland. Denny Balius admitted that for 13 years he falsified test results of Sapa products or directed others in the company's testing lab to do so.

He is the first former Sapa employee to be charged, but more than a dozen others have retained criminal defense attorneys, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.

NASA officials were stunned to learn that there may be a connection between their failed flights and a subcontractor's deception. "I would be very angry to hear that," said Bryan Fafaul, the flight director for one of the missions, known as Glory. "People at NASA were devastated. They had poured their lives into these missions."

SAPA ARRIVES IN PORTLAND

Sapa is one of the world's dominant aluminum suppliers, with 2016 revenue of $6.7 billion and more than 22,000 employees in 40 countries. It employs more than 600 in Portland.

The Oslo-based company sells aluminum that has been heated and formed into a variety of shapes. It made its first entry into the United States in 2000 when it bought the former Anodizing Inc. of Portland. At the time, Anodizing was one of the largest private employers in the city with 932 workers and $132 million in annual revenue.

Prosecutors never name Sapa in the Balius court documents, but refer only to "company A." They do say however that company A is an aluminum extruder with its North American headquarters in Rosemont, Ill., which is where Sapa's domestic operations are based.

Balius was one of the employees Sapa kept after it acquired Anodizing. He had worked for the local operation for much of his adult life, starting in 1977. In 2002, he joined Sapa's internal product testing lab.

He was soon instructed by his superiors how to alter test results, according to court documents. The next year, he was named lab supervisor. And

o

ver the next 12 years, Balius institutionalized the practice of concealing bad test results and substituting inaccurate numbers, investigators say.

Aluminum forged in these plants is supposed to be scrapped if it fails to pass strength tests.

In his plea agreement, Balius admitted that at Sapa's Portland operation, standard industry practice didn't apply. It's unclear why Balius doctored the test results. Reached Monday at his home in Rockwood, he declined to comment, as did his Portland attorney Whitney Boise.

Prosecutors contend it was all about money. In Balius' plea agreement, the Justice Department attorneys assert that Balius collected $51,412 in bonuses over the years, which were tied in part to production volume.

In other words, Balius now faces as much as 20 years in prison for bonuses that averaged $3,954 per year. A court date has not been set for sentencing.

NASA INVESTIGATOR DIGS IN

The problems at Sapa Portland might never have been discovered but for the failure of NASA's Glory mission in 2011. It came two years after an earlier launch, the Orbital Carbon Observatory, failed.

NASA's Mishap Investigation Board honed in on a chamber at the nose of the rocket where the satellite was stored until the booster rockets could get the spacecraft up to an elevation beyond the atmosphere. If all had gone as planned, the chamber would have opened and disconnected itself from the rocket.

But it didn't open and the satellite failed to deploy. The spacecraft, unable to handle the weight, crashed back into the atmosphere, the board theorized.

Greg Kopp, an experimental solar physicist, was one of the principal architects of a device installed on the Glory satellite that would measure the sun's natural variability in order to better discern human-caused climate effects. When Glory failed, six years of work went up in flames.

"There was just this sense of disbelief," recalled Kopp, a professor at the University of Colorado. "One of the hardest things was not just losing the instrument but seeing all that work by those young engineers and students simply getting lost without a good explanation."

The executive summary of the board's findings didn't mention Sapa or even aluminum.

But it wasn't over.

For reasons that are unclear, the NASA Office of the Inspector General picked up the matter. NASA investigator Wade Krieger began pressing Sapa for answers.

Jess Cline, a former human resources manager for Sapa in Portland, was among those interviewed in the probe. "Krieger's investigation began the whole thing," Cline said. "He discovered the tampering with the numbers."

Krieger did not return phone calls. His boss at the NASA office of the inspector general declined to comment.

In November 2015, Sapa came clean.

It admitted "some test results for mechanical properties -- ultimate tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation – have been altered to change failing test results to passing test results between 1996 and 2015.

Sapa added that "the misconduct was immediately stopped and the employees involved were terminated." The company tried to impose a quarantine on products manufactured in Portland.

Cline still has difficulty believing this kind of fraud was happening.

"I assured NASA that if Sapa had been aware that something like this was going on, there would have been no hesitation to fire everyone involved," he said.

For its part, Sapa officials declined to comment beyond a written statement: "We are pleased to see the government's progress in this case," the company said. "Since learning of this misconduct and reporting it to the government and customers, Sapa has undertaken aggressive actions over the past two and a half years to prevent this kind of misconduct in the future."

The company added that it has also purchased $11 million worth of state-of-the-art tensile testing equipment for its North American operations.

Sapa's admission was particularly troubling to its customers, who had unwittingly incorporated questionable aluminum into their products.

Steven Koch runs Mt. Norway Fabrication in Washougal. Among other things, he makes highway guardrails for the Washington Department of Transportation, in part with aluminum purchased from Sapa.

After the Sapa revelations, the agency demanded that Koch retest the metal to ensure it met standards. One of the samples failed, though the agency later determined the guardrail was acceptable.

Koch, who worked for Sapa before forming his own operation, said in falsifying test results, the company was putting its customers in a difficult spot and potentially putting people in danger.

"This could have been devastating to my company," Koch said. "It was scary. Worse than that, it put lives at risk."

-- Jeff Manning

503-294-7606, jmanning@oregonian.com