Admittedly, Mars has drawn more space missions than the rest of the Solar System's planets, but why have nearly two thirds of all Mars missions failed in some way? Is the "Galactic Ghoul" or the "Mars Triangle" real? Or is it a case of technological trial-and-error? In any case, the Mars Curse has been a [...]

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<sarcasm> Glad to know they came up with a scientific explanation. </sarcasm>

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
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Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

About half of the failures were Soviet losses from the '70s. Those failures are mostly launch or Earth de-orbit failures.

The U.S. failures were mostly landing attempt failures, which are couple of magnitudes harder to do that an orbit failure. I believe the U.S. has had only one orbit failure and about a dozen successes. Blame the metric system for that one failure . . .

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

That darn metric system! ;-)

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
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"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I remember vividly watching CNN with my sis when that report came in. I turned to her and said jokingly "What the...? Did somebody forget to go metric?"

And lo and behold! The truth comes out a few weeks later.

Beavis (or was it butthead?) missed the memo, and misplaced the conversion table at a most inopportune time.

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Angel of the Abyss
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"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"

This is a good article. Some of the failure modes are assumed; based upon fault-tree and most likely scenario. The metric/English unit conversion error was real, but even with the bad navigation, the probe still should have been in a 'safe' orbital corridor.

The other story is how close Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity came to biffing it, especially Spirit. All three probes landed at near the burst limit of the air bags (~25m/s), well above the nominal impact velocity of ~15m/s.

Mars has been hard, and Phoenix gives us another chance to see just how hard Mars can be. Nothing routine about these Mars landing missions!

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jwj

It's ok not to know.