The navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet, and pounds. In addition, its function was to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ‘98 program for the Mars Polar Lander.
The Mars Climate Orbiter, built at a cost of $125 million, was a 338-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on Decemto study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes. NASA’s Lost Spacecraft The Metric System and NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the ground reality turned out to be completely different, all because someone failed to use the right units, i.e., the metric units! The Scientific American Space Lab made a brief but interesting video on this very topic. In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces.
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