In the News

Mars Climate Orbiter

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Mars Climate Orbiter should have circled the Red Planet as depicted in this NASA artist's concept.

After cruising across space for 286 days, Climate Orbiter was supposed to drop into orbit around Mars from where it would assist its sister spacecraft, the Polar Lander. 

The orbiter was to have studied the planet's atmosphere, climate, meteorology and volatile surface materials such as water ice and frozen carbon dioxide. It also was to have relayed the lander's radio signals to Earth. 

Math error. Unhappily, Climate Orbiter was lost as it entered the orbit of Mars in September 1999. Mission managers said a math error had been made. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) had used metric measurements (newtons), but engineers at Lockheed Martin Astronautics had used English units (pounds) to measure the strength of Climate Orbiter thruster firings. 

http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Mars/MarsExploration/MarsSurveyor98.html#climateorbiter