Sir Arthur C. Clarke Cracks
The Tip of the Mars Iceberg

YOWUSA.COM, 28-March-01
Steve Russell

…Continued

The MCO Suddenly Disappears

On September 23 1999, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) lost contact with the $125 million Orbiter.  NASAs excuse for this failure was a navigation error resulting from a mix-up between the use of Imperial and Metric measurement systems. The MCO spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California had apparently been using different units to calculate their data.

Space.Com, November 10 1999
Navigation Team Was Unfamiliar with Mars Climate Orbiter 

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost at the Red Planet nearly seven weeks ago because the mission's navigation team was unfamiliar with the spacecraft. It lacked training, and failed to detect a mistake by outside engineers who delivered navigation information in English rather than metric units, according to a mission failure investigation report released Wednesday.

ABC News, September 30 1999
Measure for Measure  - Mars Probe Doomed Without Metric System?

The bad numbers had been used ever since the spacecraft's launch last December, but the effect was so small that it went unnoticed. The difference added up over the months as the spacecraft journeyed towards Mars.

The conversion factor from pounds of thrust (Imperial) to Newtons (Metric) is 4.44 Newtons to the pound. Since the launch in December 1998, the velocity calculations would have been in error by approximately 75%.  However the MCO had successfully flown 416 million miles over 9.5 months and was on target.

The planned altitude before the fatal orbital insertion burn was to be 93 miles. However, upon later review of the last 6-8 hours of data, NASA apparently found indications that the real altitude was approximately 37 miles and that this was somehow overlooked.

Mars Polar Lander (MPL)

NASA, January 3 1999
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status

Mars Polar Lander -- due to become the first spacecraft to set down near the edge of Mars' southern polar cap -- pierced through a blustery, cloud-covered Florida sky at 3:21 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today atop a Delta II launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Station's Launch Complex 17B. The spacecraft, launched successfully on the first day of the launch period, is equipped with a robotic arm to dig beneath the layered terrain of the Martian polar region and two microprobes to crash into the planet's surface and conduct two days of soil and water experiments up to 1 meter (3 feet) below the Martian surface.

MPL Disappearance

NASA, December 3 1999
Mars Polar Lander Mission Status

Mission controllers for NASA's Mars Polar Lander mission are awaiting the next opportunity to communicate with the spacecraft, whose transmissions have not yet been received since it landed on Mars shortly after noon Pacific time today.

The MPL disappeared after a malfunction supposedly caused it to crash into the surface of Mars at about 50-mph. 

Congressional Research Service
The Library of Congress
Issue Brief for Congress, Order Code IB92011
Updated January 22 2001
U.S. Space Programs: Civilian, Military, and Commercial

An investigation team could not determine for certain what caused the December failures, but believes that MPL was lost due to a software design problem.

The design problem was said to have resulted from inadequate acceptance testing and even middle management has been accused of tampering with the test conditions.

UPI, March 21 2000
NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed

…rather than begin an expensive and time-consuming redesign, an unnamed space official simply altered the conditions of the testing until the engine passed.  "That happened in middle management," the source told UPI. "It was done unilaterally with no approval up or down the chain of command."

The only independent report on the loss of MPL was produced by a team lead by retired aerospace executive Thomas Young. Substantial inconsistencies during the handling of this report further increased our suspicions that something significant was going on behind the scenes.

An analysis of news reports at the time of the loss, identified significant inconsistencies that indicated a serious underlying problem with the way this "mishap" was being handled.

The Millennium Group, March 26 2000
UPI vs The NASA Spinmeisters -
Why Was Spin Necessary In The First Place?

Although the Young report was initially independent, the reports coming from major news outlets that were keen to get their hands on the information highlighted the beginnings of a cover-up that could have far reaching ramifications.

Media Probes Cover-ups

United Press International (UPI) reported that the White House was involved in the handling of this report.

United Press International, March 21 2000
NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed

According to Lori Garver, NASAs associate administrator for plans, the report on NASAs failures will be reviewed internally and then will be sent to the White House before being released to the public.

Next, The Associated Press reported on a Senate Commerce Subcommittee that was told the White House was not involved.  The article was titled, "NASA Chief Admits To Problems", written by Paul Recer and was posted on March 22 2000 at 18:50.  This report can no longer be found.  However, the following ABC News report has posted Mr Recer's article a day later.

ABC News, March 23 2000
NASA’s Troubles - Goldin Admits Agency Tried to Do Too Much With Too Little

The subcommittee also asked Goldin about a press story that a report critical of the agency was being withheld until it could be evaluated by the White House.

Goldin denied this, saying that the report will be released next week.  He said the report has not been changed by NASA and that the White House is not involved.

Finally, UPI followed up re-confirming that the White was indeed involved.

United Press International, March 22, 2000
NASA Chief Denies Agency Ignored Data On Mars Lander

NASA has declined to publicly comment on the report, which Goldin said is being examined by unspecified officials at the White House.  While Goldin assured lawmakers that no changes would be made to the report as a result of the "review", he refused to provide lawmakers with the version of the report that was sent to the White House.

At the White House, an official in the office of Science and Technology Policy refused to say whether the administration had a copy of the report and referred all inquires to NASA, which failed to return repeated UPI phone calls throughout the day.

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With all these inconsistencies, it seems that the independent report may have been modified to match the findings made by other internal reports before being released for public consumption.

At the end of this whole apparently disastrous fiasco, NASAs Mars program emerged with nothing more than a token public punishment, followed by an increased budget for the next financial year. 

Incompetence Yields New Funding for NASA

After John Pike, a space policy analyst with the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, reviewed the action reports on the loss of the MCO, he was not impressed.

MSNBC, March 13 2000
NASA fine-tunes its philosophy

The Mars Climate Orbiter board included a new 100-point checklist for project management and review, but Pike was unimpressed.

"That’s too long of a checklist.  … There was nothing in there that was prioritized," Pike said.  He suggested jokingly that the space agency might do better to emulate China's Mao Zedong, who "had only Eight Points of Attention."

Aside from some minor name-calling and expressed disappointment from authorities, there was very little negative fallout from these disasters.  At the end of the day, NASA even received a dramatic increase in funding from the government for their Mars Surveyor Program!

NASA, February 1, 1999
FY 2000 Budget Briefing 

This amount was slightly modified to a reduced budget of $248.4 million, which is still an impressive increase of $20 million. However, the budgeted amount for FY 2001 was yet another increase of $78.3 million.  Despite these major failures, NASA received an increase of almost $100 million over two years!

NASA, February 7 2000
FY 2001 Budget Briefing

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