Will PMI’s new requirements credential (PMI-PBA) prevent problems like these?

Posted by lward on May 9, 2022 in PMChat Bloggers, Uncategorized | Comments Off

By “these” I am referring to the Mars Climate Orbiter mission failure of 1995. The pics below tell it’s sad tale. Designed to help scientists understand Mar’s water history and potential for life, the $125 m spacecraft completed a nearly 10 month journey to Mars where it was to go into orbit around the “red planet.” It was launched on 11 December 1998 at 18:45:51 UTC aboard a Delta II 7425 rocket from Cape Canaveral SLC-17A It was a successful launch and everyone at Mission Control congratulated themselves on the beginning of such an exciting mission. On September 23, 2022 all communications with the spacecraft was lost. 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. In NASA’s language it “unintentionally deorbited.” The question was “Why?” The ground based software, developed by Lockheed, a contractor, was written using English foot-pound units, instead of the metric units specified by NASA in its contract.