On 1998 December 11th, the Mars Climate Orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was part of a dual mission. The other thing was the Mars Polar Lander, which would be launched about a couple of weeks later. The role of the Mars Climate Orbiter was to study the climate at Mars and the atmosphere and act as a communication relay station for the Mars Polar Lander. No matter how much mathematical calculation you pre-program into a satellite, it is impossible to hope that you will launch one from Earth, and many million miles later, many months later, it will still go precisely where you are supposed to send it. And hence, scientists at Mission Control need to monitor the progress of the satellite constantly. Like any other satellite, this orbiter had something called the ‘reaction wheel’, which is used to stabilize and create the right trajectory. The way this worked for the Mars Orbiter was – that data was collected by the satellite, processed and then sent out to Mission Control, where it was again checked by a software and put into a file. It is this data that scientists used to decide how much correction in the angular momentum would give the right trajectory, and then they would fire the spacecraft’s thrusters. Every time the scientists fired the thrusters, the software measured the resulting change in trajectory in the satellite and on the ground. That’s where the problem comes in. The two software programs measured force with two different units of measurement. The software on the satellite designed by NASA measured force in the standard unit of measurement, the metric unit of measurement, which is Newtons per second. However, the software on the ground measured it in the Imperial system of pounds per second. The problem is that 1 Pound per second is equal to 4.45 Newtons. So, every time the thrusters were fired, the adjustment was lower by a factor of 4.45. In a long journey of millions of kilometres, these little problems can become big ones. In the case of the Mars Climate Orbiter’s journey of 104 million kilometres and nine months, the thrusters were fired seven times. And this resulted in the fact that when the orbiter finally reached the Red Planet, it was 170 kilometres closer to the planet’s surface than it needed to be for the final thrust to put it into the elliptical orbit around Mars. Hence, when the scientists fired the final thrust, they lost contact, and the satellite was never found again. Scientists believe it was too close to the atmosphere, so the atmospheric tension and friction must have destroyed it. Why did this happen? In the 1990s, the Clinton administration was putting a lot of pressure on NASA to be within budget. And NASA had a lot of ambitious plans coming forth. The International Space Station was to be launched. The Hubble Space Telescope, which had a problem, was to be repaired. Hence, NASA decided to outsource some of its cheaper missions, like the Mars mission. In this case, they outsourced it to Lockheed Martin. The problem was that while NASA measured force in the metric measurement of Newtons per second, Lockheed Martin measured it in Imperial measure of Pounds per second. While the contract between NASA and Lockheed Martin clearly stated that all data needs to be measured in the metric system, and hence Lockheed Martin should have measured force in Newtons per Second. This small but crucial element should have been checked. The scientists just took it for granted. That little mistake cost the United States $330 billion. Valued by currency at that time – 1998. Later, when NASA did an investigation, they blamed it on communication failure, both at NASA and between NASA and its contractor, Lockheed Martin. Business Points ( Tags ) #communication #clarity #recheck #scrutiny #littlethings #errorscanmakeabigdifference #cumulativeeffect
