Space Daily September 10, 2026 • 16:15

NASA lost a $125 million spacecraft at Mars because one engineering team used English units while another expected metric — the mismatch quietly pushed the orbiter onto the wrong trajectory after nine months in space - Space Daily

A decade of planning and a quarter-billion dollars in funding vanished in seconds when two teams speaking different measurement languages sent a spacecraft crashing into Mars.

A little after 2am Pacific time on 23 September 1999, a spacecraft slipped behind Mars and never came out the other side.
Mars Climate Orbiter was supposed to skim about 226 kilometres above the sur… [+5537 chars]

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NASA lost a $125 million spacecraft at Mars because one engineering team used English units while another expected metric — the mismatch quietly pushed the orbiter onto the wrong trajectory after nine months in space - Space Daily

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