the Mars Climate Orbiter

programmingops culture

The 1999 NASA probe lost because two teams exchanged thrust data in different units.

One team's software produced results in pound-force seconds while the navigation software expected newton-seconds, so the spacecraft flew too close to Mars and was destroyed in the atmosphere. A 125-million-dollar mission ended over an unchecked unit mismatch - the textbook argument for typed quantities and interface contracts.

Also known as: Mars Climate Orbiter, MCO, metric mixup

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