this is the only photograph of Mars that a multi-million dollar failed space mission generated the grainy image represents a huge oversight but we are a little ahead of ourselves let's rewind a little bit it is the 11th of December 1998 and it's an exciting day a new space mission is set to be launched is expected to reach its destination in roughly nine and a half months time its target is Mars but after its some 42 minute burn into space and just about human gestation time journey later it disappears the instant would bring into question many things at NASA but its cause would be a deadly simple one my name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult today we're looking at the Mars Climate Orbiter incident this video wouldn't have been financially possible if it wasn't for my Patreon YouTube and Kofi members to get early access to the channel's videos then check out the links in the pinned comment below [Music] my eldest daughter has just discovered learning about space she recently went to the planetarium at Grenidge and now all she wants to do is sit on the sofa with me and watch videos about the International Space Station i'm not going to lie I've been enjoying her fascination with learning and it conveniently gives me a great excuse for getting out of doing the dishes anyways now my YouTube recommendations are all space related videos and thus I went down the rabbit hole once again in search for a space-based disaster and here we are i'm also happy to press the no one died button today as well although I'm sure this incident injured a few people's careers more about Mars this is Mars which is not here on a map thankfully Mars has always been a target for scientific programs dating all the way back to the 1960s the planet offers up the closest destination for manned missions apart from our own moon as such many many missions of probes cameras robots and the like have been flung at the red planet all in an effort to understand its surface climate and atmosphere now I'm not the very informative vintage space YouTube channel so I won't dive too deep into the history behind Mars exploration apart from the background to our story nasa in the early 1990s was having a few financial strains with the battling cost of the ISS the space shuttle program maintenance getting increasingly more expensive and the loss of the Mars Observer because of this the administration sought to look for some more costconscious forms of space exploration this led to the 22 member technology for small spacecraft panel which sought out looking at sub 1,000 kg craft that wouldn't rely on Titan rockets or the shuttle for inserting into space the first mission that came about from this 1992 panel was the Mars Global Surveyor this was close to the weight target at 1,035 kg now it was a success and next came the Mars Pathfinder which again was a success finally we get on to the next mission which is for our focus for today's video mars Climate Orbiter so the MCO was one of two missions labeled Mars Surveyor 98 the other was the polar lander the two spacecraft would be launched just a few weeks apart making use of the optimal launch period which come around every 780 days where journeys between the two planets are most efficient the concept for the mission was to gain vital data on Martian weather climate water and carbon dioxide now the climate orbiter actually had two jobs in this mission the first being for the measuring of the climate of Mars and the second acting as a communications relay for the polar lander it was to be designed and built by Loheed Martin astronautics under contract from NASA they were also responsible for lead flight systems integration to test the craft and to support launch operations this included the software the craft would run nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory kept control of and I'm quoting in NASA's later reports here overall project management spacecraft instrument development management project systems engineering mission design navigation design mission operation system development ground data systems development and mission assurance so the TLDDR Loheed Martin was the one for design and construction and NASA was the one to operate the MCO the MCO was free axis stabilized making use of eight thrusters these thrusters would be vital in the final positioning for the spacecraft into Mars orbit after it very long voyage from Earth the MCO also had reaction wheels these are like flywheels and help with altitude and orientation basically helping the spacecraft not end up tumbling around sometimes the reaction wheels built up too much momentum this required a thing called an angular momentum desaturation event this was a thruster burn after each event the onboard computer with its small forces software sent data back to its companion software back on Earth this software was used to calculate spacecraft's position and to plan future AMD events the communications between these two softwares was essential to the mission success hint hint for later on the craft had a single computer using an IBM processor utilizing a multi-chip CPU with the ability to run at 5 10 and 20 MHz the computer had 128 MGB of RAM and a whopping 18 MGB of flash memory where all the software was stored to provide electrical power to the craft it had a free panel solar array providing an average of 500 W estimated when in Mars orbit which stored its electricity in nickel hydrogen batteries the total weight of the whole MCO was 638 kg which is around the weight of a first generation Honda Civic and it cost around $125 million which is the equivalent cost of 5,2024 Honda Civics so the mission plan for the MCO once near Mars and ready to get into orbit was as follows it was to fire its main engine to do an orbital insertion burn around Mars this would put the orbiter into an elliptical orbit next in order to get to its designed altitude a process called error braing would be employed this required two weeks to reduce the speed of the MCO and to bring it into a more circular orbit so now we've looked at all that I think it's time to look at the mission how it actually played out the Mars Climate Orbiter mission the MCO was launched on the 11th of December 1998 at quarter to 7 in the evening by NASA at Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida by a Delta 2 7425 launch vehicle after its just under our burn time the MCO was well on its course for its 9 1/2 month flight time to the red planet this journey for NASA was anything but problem free the ground navigation software was giving issues resulting in location data having to be communicated to NASA from the contractor via email the software would be fixed up but strange data was being shown it was discussed but no formal investigation into the odd data was launched on the 8th of September the trajectory control maneuver number four would be calculated using data from the MCO's navigation software this was to work out how much burn was needed to place the MCO on the correct trajectory for the insertion burn by September the Mars Climate Orbiter was reaching very close to Mars itself the maneuver would be executed on the 15th of September this should have placed the MCO 226 km above Mars's surface however it was found that as the insertion burns time approached the MCO was much closer to the planet than anticipated it had been drawn in by the planet's gravity to a distance of under half of the estimated distance at 110 km something was very wrong they were dangerously close but it could be saved with an emergency trajectory maneuver but after discussing which would include ramifications of extending the MCO's orbital insertion and thus affecting the polar lander's communication once on Mars's surface it was decided that the powers of B to keep on the schedule it was expected that the MCO would lose contact with Earth for around 5 minutes as it passed the other side of the planet but strangely the MCO went comm's dark around a minute earlier than anticipated the time was 9:04 in the morning and 52 seconds on the 23rd of September 1999 communication would never be remade with the MCO again the mission would be declared a failure and the MCO lost 2 days after the last comms they would later calculate that the last known point was at just 57 km from Mars's surface out comes I guess that at it either was smashed up in the atmosphere or skimmed off back into an unknown orbit but of course the question of why would come about and most definitely need to be answered the investigation now NASA launched an investigation panel into the loss on the 15th of October 1999 the cause would be deliberated between the 18th and 22nd of October and it was fairly apparent that there was some kind of data issue and this was the cause investigators looked at the small forces software that was used for calculating the MCO's position and to direct angular momentum desaturation events it was found that the software was using English units of measurement like pounds per square foot this might be fine if everyone else was using the same units but surprise surprise they weren't every other part of the project was using metric units which meant that the data NASA was acting on to operate the MCO was out way out by a factor of 4.45 this meant that the MCO was in the wrong position for its trajectory correction maneuver thus causing the disaster getting the measurements mixed up between imperial and metric is a common issue for example my wife and I often measure things incorrectly which results in something either arriving too big or too small than what we anticipated but we are two idiotic people from a sunny corner of South London not NASA so how did this mistake get itself on a spaceship heading for Mars well the initial issue was with the software made by Loheed Martin using the wrong units of measurement against the specifications set out by NASA but it was still up to NASA to verify that these specifications were met it's like when you buy something it's still your responsibility to make sure it works on top of that during the mission two navigation staff pointed out the discrepancy but upper management ignored these concerns due to reports not being filed in the correct form the panel of the disaster didn't place the blame at the contractor either instead pointing the finger of blame more towards NASA on the whole for just rushing things through and not properly validating every aspect of the mission saying the investigation board found no evidence of complete end-to-end testing for the small forces software and they could not determine whether independent verification and validation had been performed on the software in question the failure would further be hammered home with the Mars polar lander also failing crashing into the Mars surface due to another separate issue so that's my video on the Mars climate orbiter it's going to be a two on my disaster scale and this is what I've got for my root cause analysis card do you agree let me know in the comments below this is plentiful production all videos on the channel are creative with coms actuation share like licensed plenty of videos are produced by me John in a currently quite warm corner of southern London UK and all I have to say is thank you very much for watching and Mr music play us out please [Music]