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0 pointsnitrogen5y ago0 comments

NASA's ability of succeeding at landing things successfully on the first try on foreign bodies since 1969 is mind-blowing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

> The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the sun. An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and non-metric ("English") units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Polar_Lander#Landing_atte...

> Communication was expected to be reestablished with the spacecraft at 20:39:00 UTC after having landed. However, no communication was possible with the spacecraft, and the lander was declared lost.

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macintux5y ago

In fairness to the parent comment: those weren’t the first try.

m4rtink5y ago

Mars Observer is mad that you forgot to mention it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Observer

Actually it is not mad - becase it exploded into millions of pieces due to the leaky fuel system...

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