Question

Mars Climate Orbiter engineering failure vs very  successful  Mars Exploration Rovers missions

Investigate the failed Mars Climate Orbiter mission by doing your own on line research and by reading pages 160-161 in the textbook(engneering fundemental by Saeed Moaveni) in advance of the lecture on chapter 6. Write a 2-page paper that summarizes what happened. In this paper explain the follow-on precautions that were taken to prevent a re-occurrence of the same issues, which led to the three enormously successful Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity and the recent Curiosity Rover Mission. Explain how the Spirit and Opportunity missions and the Curiosity Rover mission compared to the Mars Climate Orbiter mission from an engineering perspective, especially relating to Chapter 6 in the textbook. (We will have just covered Chapter 6 the day the assignment is due, but just consider the importance of correct engineering units, as we have already discussed in class). DO NOT WAIT TO BEGIN YOUR WRITE-UP until we cover Chapter 6 on 10/4!!! Also consider other key engineering issues studied in the Chapters 1-5 including engineering ethics, engineering communications, and engineering design. Give specific examples in all cases that identifies the engineering practices that worked along with those that did not work (and why). Include a MLA-formatted reference list and in-text citations. If you are unfamiliar with MLA see this site for help. The MLA source list does not count towards the 2-page write-up page limit. You should cite the textbook and the on line sources included in the assignment, plus any others that you use. Use the proper MLA format for on line sources and textbooks and in-text citations.

Answer 1

The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a 338-kilogram (745 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-force seconds (lbf·s) instead of the SI units of newton-seconds (N·s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. 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.

As given in book of "Engineering Fundamentals" by saeed moaveni, the sole reason of failure behind this mission is two group of engineers working on the project neglected to communicate correctly their calculation with appropriate units. The peer review findings indicated that one team used U.S customary units (e.g foot and pound) while the other used S.I units (e.g meter and kilogram) for a key spacecraft operation.According to NASA, the information exchangeed between the teams was critical to the maneuvers required to place the spacecraft in the proper mars orbit.

Precaution that NASA took after-wards from this incident (Failure of Mars Climate Orbiter) to carry succesfull expedition (Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit and Opportunity):

Cook,Project Manager said NASA made some "big-time" changes after that. Several planned missions, including a mission that was to bring Mars rocks back to Earth, were scrapped. The space agency went back to basics, rebuilding its Mars program based on conservative strategies and concepts that had already been tested.

And it worked. The fantastically successful Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, rose from the ashes. Not only did the rovers both land safely and complete their original 90-day mission, but they're still running six years later.