In a $125 million loss. 😯 engineering
The Mars Climate Orbiter was a 338-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Red Planet and serve as a communications relay for the Mars Polar Lander. At 09:00:46 UT on September 23, 1999, the orbiter began its Mars orbit insertion as planned. The spacecraft was scheduled to re-establish contact after passing behind Mars, but, unfortunately, no signals were received from the spacecraft," wrote NASA in the statement.
NASA led an investigation and quickly discovered that a navigational error had occurred due to commands from Earth being sent in English units without being converted into the metric standard . Although this might not seem like a big deal, space travel is a very precise science and the mistake led to theMCO fell into the Martian atmosphere at approximately 35 miles in altitude and burned up and broke down into many little pieces. The spacecraft was forever lost.
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