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Re: nasa goofs
It's a wonder the thing got that close to Mars (and not Venus or Saturn) if
they mixed up their metrics!
>NASA lost contact with the $125 million probe Sept. 24 as it attempted to
>go
>into orbit around the Red Planet. Turns out the spacecraft was fatally
>close
>to the planet's surface as it began its final braking maneuver.
>
>It now appears the spacecraft probably was slightly off-course its entire 9
>1/2-month journey due to the mixup.
>
>Preliminary findings released Thursday by NASA show that Lockheed Martin
>Astronautics in Colorado, which built the spacecraft, submitted its
>navigation data to NASA's control team in California in English
>measurements. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California assumed the
>figures were in metric, since that is what NASA has been using for previous
>Mars missions.
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