or the thing looks bulletproof," Cook said. "In this business, you're either just shy of it working. Not only did the rovers both land safely and complete their original 90-day mission, but they're still running six years later. The fantastically successful Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, rose from the ashes. The space agency went back to basics, rebuilding its Mars program based on conservative strategies and concepts that had already been tested.Īnd it worked. In the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility -2 (SAEF-2), the Mars Climate Orbiter is in place for its spin test. Several planned missions, including a mission that was to bring Mars rocks back to Earth, were scrapped. Vibrations in that craft's legs may have convinced the craft's on-board computer it had already landed, when it was still 100 feet in the air.Ĭook said NASA made some "big-time" changes after that. The Mars Polar Lander, which launched 23 days after Mars Climate Orbiter, also disappeared on the way to the planet's surface. 21 titled " Beginning a Bargain-Basement Invasion of Mars," foreshadowing the disasters to come. The New York Times ran a preview article Sept. "Certainly that project was trying to do a whole lot for a limited amount of money." "'Better, faster, cheaper' was the mantra at the time," Cook said. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab assumed the conversion had been made, and didn't check.īut there was an underlying issue in the culture of NASA's space exploration at the time, Cook said. One pound of force is about 4.45 newtons. Propulsion engineers, like those at Lockheed Martin who built the craft, typically express force in pounds, but it was standard practice to convert to newtons for space missions. The whole thing could be written off as a miscommunication. Simulations showed that, at any altitude lower than 53 miles, atmospheric friction would tear the fragile craft apart. Ultimately, the Mars Climate Orbiter came within 37 miles of the Martian surface.
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