Nasa Conversion Error
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to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched, space agency officials said Thursday.A navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the metric system of millimeters and meters
Unit Conversion Errors
in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, which designed and built 1983 air canada flight 143 the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet and pounds.As a result, JPL engineers mistook acceleration mars probe lost due to simple math error readings measured in English units of pound-seconds for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds.In a sense, the spacecraft was lost in translation."That is so dumb," said John Logsdon, director of George Washington
Failures In Metric Conversion
University's space policy institute. "There seems to have emerged over the past couple of years a systematic problem in the space community of insufficient attention to detail."The loss of the Mars probe was the latest in a series of major spaceflight failures this year that destroyed billions of dollars worth of research, military and communications satellites or left them spinning in useless orbits. Earlier this month, an
Measurement Mistakes In History
independent national security review concluded that many of those failures stemmed from an overemphasis on cost cutting, mismanagement, and poor quality control at Lockheed Martin, which manufactured several of the malfunctioning rockets.But NASA officials and Lockheed executives said it was too soon to apportion blame for the most recent mishap. Accident review panels convened by JPL and NASA are still investigating why no one detected the error."It was launched that way," said Noel Hinners, vice president for flight systems at Lockheed Martin's space systems group. "We were transmitting English units and they were expecting metric units. The normal thing is to use metric and to specify that."None of JPL's rigorous quality control procedures caught the error in the nine months it took the spacecraft to make its 461-million-mile flight to Mars. Over the course of the journey, the miscalculations were enough to throw the spacecraft so far off track that it flew too deeply into the Martian atmosphere and was destroyed when it entered its initial orbit around Mars last week.John Pike, space policy director at the Federation of American Scientists, said that it was embarrassing to lose a spacecraft to such a simple math error. "It is very difficul
duration 286days Mission failure Spacecraft properties Manufacturer Lockheed Martin Launch mass 338 kilograms (745lb) Power 500watts Start of mission Launch date 11 December 1998, 18:45:51(1998-12-11UTC18:45:51Z)UTC Rocket Delta II 7425 Launch site Cape Canaveral SLC-17A End nasa metric of mission Last contact 23 September 1999 09:06:00(1999-09-23UTC09:07Z)UTC Decay date 23 September 1999 Unintentionally
Conversion Mistakes
deorbited Orbital parameters Reference system Areocentric Epoch Planned The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a 338-kilogram (745lb) metric mishap caused loss of nasa orbiter worksheet robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program for Mars http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/01/news/mn-17288 Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the SI units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate.[1][2] Contents 1 Mission background 1.1 History 1.2 Spacecraft design 1.2.1 Scientific instruments 2 Mission profile 2.1 Launch and trajectory 2.2 Encounter with Mars 3 Cause of failure 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links Mission background[edit] History[edit] After the loss of Mars Observer and the onset of the rising costs associated with the future International Space Station, NASA began seeking less expensive, smaller probes for scientific interplanetary missions. In 1994, the Panel on Small Spacecraft Technology was established to set guidelines for future miniature spacecraft. The panel determined that the new line of miniature spacecraft should be under 1000 kilograms with highly focused instrumentation.[3] In 1995, a new Mars Surveyor program began as a set of missions designed with limited objectives, low costs, and frequent launches. The first mission in the new program was Mars Global Surveyor, launched in 1996 to map Mars and provide geologic data using instruments intended for Mars Observer.[4] Following Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Climate Orbiter carried two instruments, one originally intended for Mars Observer, to study the climate and weather of Mars. The primary science objectives of the mission included:[5] determine the distribution of water on Mars monitor the daily weather and atmospheric conditions rec