The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1995, the latest was in 2019
Four milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
1975 – MM X-24B flight 58, Dryden Lake – Pilot Bill Dana
1977 – ALT-14, Free Flight #3, Enterprise Shuttle/Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, Dryden Research Center, Edwards AFB. Crew: Fred Haise, Gordon Fullerton. 24,700 feet, 5 minutes 34 seconds shuttle flight, tail cone on, lakebed landing. Approach and Landing Test program.
2019 – NASA awards LM a contract to build six Orion spacecraft – MILESTONE: 5 years ago
Military and Classified Programs:
1963 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Corona 71, Thor SLV-2A/Lockheed Agena D, SLC2W, VAFB
1964 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, GD Atlas SLV-3/Lockheed Agena D, SLC4E, VAFB – MILESTONE: 60 years ago
1977 – LAUNCH: Classified mission, MM Titan 24B, SLC4W, VAFB
1985 – US Space Command activated at Peterson AFB, Colorado
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
1999 – FAILURE: LM Mars Climate Orbiter failed at Mars orbital insertion – units error for thrusters resulted in spacecraft being off-course – MILESTONE: 25 years ago
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
1997 – LAUNCH: LM (GE) Intelsat 803, Ariane 42L, ELA2, Kourou, French Guiana
1999 – LAUNCH: Echostar 5, LM Atlas IIAS, LC36A, CCAFS – MILESTONE: 25 years ago
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1955 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Lockheed X-17, LC3, CCAFS
1960 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Polaris A1, LC29A, CCAFS
1960 – LAUNCH FAILURE: Lockheed Polaris A1, SSBN599, ETR
1961 – LAUNCH: Martin Titan I, 395-A1, VAFB
1963 – LAUNCH: MM Titan II, 395-D, VAFB
1983 – LAUNCH: MM Pershing 1A, LC16, CCAFS
2023 – LAUNCH: LM Trident II D-5, SSBN743, WTR
Other:
NONE
The photos today are of Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) in acoustic testing and a graphic showing the expected versus actual trajectories of the spacecraft. The following caption was found for the acoustic testing photo from Wikipedia; photo credit NASA/JPL:
“The Mars Surveyor ’98 Climate Orbiter is shown here during acoustic tests that simulate launch conditions. The orbiter was to conduct a two year primary mission to profile the Martian atmosphere and map the surface. To carry out these scientific objectives, the spacecraft carried a rebuilt version of the pressure modulated infrared radiometer, lost with the Mars Observer spacecraft, and a miniaturized dual camera system the size of a pair of binoculars, provided by Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., San Diego, California. During its primary mission, the orbiter was to monitor Mars atmosphere and surface globally on a daily basis for one Martian year (two Earth years), observing the appearance and movement of atmospheric dust and water vapor, as well as characterizing seasonal changes of the planet’s surface. Imaging of the surface morphology would also provide important clues about the planet’s climate in its early history. The mission was part of NASA’s Mars Surveyor program, a sustained program of robotic exploration of the red planet, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Astronautics was NASA’s industrial partner in the mission. Unfortunately, Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere on September 23, 1999, due to a metric conversion error that caused the spacecraft to be off course.”
The graphic was created by Xsession from the investigation board report and has the following Creative Commons labeling:
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You are free:
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
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More details from a Wikipedia article about the failure from the NASA publicly released information about the failure: On November 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board released a Phase I report, detailing the suspected issues encountered with the loss of the spacecraft.
Previously, on September 8, 1999, Trajectory Correction Maneuver-4 (TCM-4) was computed, and was then executed on September 15, 1999. It was intended to place the spacecraft at an optimal position for an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring the spacecraft around Mars at an altitude of 226 km (140 miles) on September 23, 1999.
However, during the week between TCM-4 and the orbital insertion maneuver, the navigation team reported that it appeared the insertion altitude could be much lower than planned, at about 150 to 170 km (93 to 106 miles). Twenty-four hours prior to orbital insertion, calculations placed the orbiter at an altitude of 110 km (68 miles). 80 km (50 miles) was the minimum altitude that Mars Climate Orbiter was thought to be capable of surviving during this maneuver.
During insertion, the orbiter was intended to skim through Mars’ upper atmosphere, gradually aerobraking for weeks, but post-failure calculations showed that the spacecraft’s trajectory would have taken it within 57 km (35 miles) of the surface. At this altitude, the spacecraft would likely have skipped violently off the denser-than-expected atmosphere and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere, or re-entered heliocentric space.
The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in United States units (English) contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. Specifically, software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings produced results in pound-force seconds. The trajectory calculation software then used these results – expected to be in newton-seconds (incorrect by a factor of 4.45) – to update the predicted position of the spacecraft.
Still, NASA does not place the responsibility on Lockheed for the mission loss; instead, various officials at NASA have stated that NASA itself was at fault for failing to make the appropriate checks and tests that would have caught the discrepancy.
The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they “did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns”. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
