By “these” I am referring to the Mars Climate Orbiter mission failure of 1995.
The pics below tell it’s sad tale.
Designed to help scientists understand Mar’s water history and potential for life, the $125 m spacecraft completed a nearly 10 month journey to Mars where it was to go into orbit around the “red planet.”
It was launched on 11 December 1998 at 18:45:51 UTC aboard a Delta II 7425 rocket from Cape Canaveral SLC-17A
It was a successful launch and everyone at Mission Control congratulated themselves on the beginning of such an exciting mission.
On September 23, 1999 all communications with the spacecraft was lost.
The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate. In NASA’s language it “unintentionally deorbited.” The question was “Why?”
The ground based software, developed by Lockheed, a contractor, was written using English foot-pound units, instead of the metric units specified by NASA in its contract. A classic case of failure to meet the requirements otherwise known as a pretty big screw up!
NASA did a complete investigation and lessons learned to uncover why such a critical requirement was completely missed. And, to be sure, NASA is not alone in such instances where a critical, and obvious, requirement was not met, even with all the safeguards, review meetings, reports, dashboards, risk reviews, audits and other controls in place.
Will PMI’s new requirements management credential going to prevent such disasters as these? We can only hope.
