Was that an inch or a millimeter

On December 11, 1998 NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter at a cost exceeding $327 million. The orbiter carried a wide range of equipment to observe weather data from mars and to relay the information back to Earth. Nine months later, the spacecraft  reached Mars. It began an orbit of the planet but was almost immediately lost in a catastrophic mishap. The contractor providing the software that steered the Orbiter used English units of measurement whereas NASA built the spacecraft to receive instructions in the metric system. Before the error was detected the Orbiter flew too close to the surface of Mars and was burned up in the Martian atmosphere. Bummer....

 

 

Thanks, John Jenkins
865-803-8179  cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com  
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

"Telling shoeless people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps is not only cruel, it's also pointless."
Martin Luther King