Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report¶
Stephenson, A. G. (1999). Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Assumption
- A navigation module computes thrust from a sensor reading, assuming the reading is in metric units; an upstream component, written by a different team, emits it in imperial units.
This sourceDocuments the loss of the orbiter due to an unstated unit-convention assumption (pound-force seconds vs. newton-seconds) at a software interface between teams.
- A navigation module computes thrust from a sensor reading, assuming the reading is in metric units; an upstream component, written by a different team, emits it in imperial units.
- Equivocation
- The 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter loss is equivocation in a safety-critical software pipeline, with the token being a unit rather than a word.
This sourceEstablishes that the spacecraft loss resulted from ground software producing impulse data in pound-force-seconds while the spacecraft navigation software consumed it as newton-seconds — a unit (referent) mismatch with no conversion at the boundary.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
The board report establishes the 1999 loss was caused by a units mismatch (English vs metric) in the ground software pipeline; the equivocation label is the article's own.
“The MCO MIB has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file”
- The 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter loss is equivocation in a safety-critical software pipeline, with the token being a unit rather than a word.
Verification¶
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Registry ID ref:8ed0597ae9ab · see in the full table