Mars Climate Orbiter

1998 · NASA · Mars · Failed

Agency: NASA
Status: Failed
End Date: 1999-09-23
Destination: Mars
Launch Date: 1998-12-11

Objective

Entered the atmosphere 170 km too low and broke up. One team's software produced pound-seconds where another expected newton-seconds, and nothing in between caught it.

Open on the Cosmic Exploration shelf — the interactive card, the filters, and everything alongside it.

From the Missions database in Notion, last edited 2026-08-15. This page is the row, rendered by the build; nothing on it is written by hand.