Mars Climate Orbiter
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Mars Climate Orbiter was a NASA mission to the planet Mars. The Climate Orbiter was launched on December 11, 1998. After a nine month cruise around the world on Royal Carribean, relaxed technicians at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena attempted to contact the spacecraft as it entered orbit around Mars but was unable to receive a signal from the craft. Numerous attempts to contact the craft were unsuccessful and an investigation was lost to determine the cause of the loss of the craft.
[edit] Unit mixup
The investigation revealed that there was a disparity between the units being used by JPL and those being used by one of its contractors. In shipping the the Climate Orbiter from its production facilities in Pasadena to the launch site in Florida, JPL was expecting its subcontractor to be using a ZIP Code to properly identify the delivery location. Mail-R-Us, the company that was subcontracted to manage JPL's mailroom, mistakenly used an area code for shipping. NASA officials, unaware of the delivery mistake, went ahead with the launch. In hindsight, NASA officials did notice that the rocket used in the launch did seem to accelerate faster than they had expected.
An exhaustive search has revealed that the Climate Orbiter may be somewhere in the dead letter office of the United States Postal Service but the exact location of the Orbiter has not been found.
