In the Global Surveyor mission, that we are told failed because of a metric/Texan unit conversion error, when you read the details that is not precisely what happened, the radar imaging data told the navigators the Surveyor was coming in hot, so hot they assumed that there must be an error in the radar data, so they ignored it and went instead with the estimates from acceleration calculations – estimates that we now know were off by a conversion error. But the reason the probe accelerated toward Mars at a higher than expected acceleration was explained as a “difference in the orientation of the solar panels”.


Hmmm...that's funny because Surveyor is still in orbit around Mars taking wonderful images and transmitting large amounts of data.

I assume you mean the Mars Climate Orbiter.

that is not precisely what happened

Oh ok....how bout some links to back yourself up?

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/mco990930.html

http://www.space.com/news/mco_report-b_991110.html

http://www.exploringmars.com/missions/mco/

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/10/orbiter.03/

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