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 MARS CLIMATE ORBITER (Mars Orbiter) NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter, atop a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle, lifted off Cape Canaveral Air Station's launch pad 17A at1:45 p.m. EST on 11 December 1998. Due to a battery-realted software problem, the launch occurred one day after its scheduled liftoff.
The orbiter was to be inserted into orbit around Mars on 23 September 1999 after a 9 1/2 month journey. Unfortunately, a failure to recognize and correct an error in a transfer of information between the orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California led to the loss of the spacecraft. The peer review preliminary findings indicate that one team used English units (e.g., inches, feet and pounds) while the other used metric units for a key spacecraft operation. This information was critical to the maneuvers required to place the spacecraft in the proper Mars orbit.
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