Mars Climate Explorer
On 23rd September 1999 NASA lost the $125 million
spacecraft Mars Climate Explorer, as it reached Mars.
Unfortunately one engineering team used metric units while
another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, for that reason,
information failed to transfer between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team
at Lockheed Martin in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California.
"People sometimes make errors," said Edward
Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in a written
statement. "The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of
NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to
detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."
The navigation mishap pushed the spacecraft dangerously
close to the planet's atmosphere where it presumably burned and broke into
pieces, killing the mission on a day when engineers had expected to celebrate
the craft's entry into Mars' orbit.
The space craft had completed a nearly 10 month journey when
it reached Mars, its mission was to relay data from an upcoming mission called
Mars Polar Lander, and help understand the early climate on Mars.
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