NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap

References Official investigation report IEEE Spectrum investigation report Official report on project management at NASA 2

Agenda Spacecraft and its mission Mission failure Failure causes root cause contributing causes NASA’s mission planning paradigm 3

Agenda Spacecraft and its mission Mission failure Failure causes root cause contributing causes NASA’s mission planning paradigm 4

Mars Climate Orbiter - Mission The first weather satellite for another planet profile Martian atmosphere map Martian surface Mars Polar Lander support relay for future missions 5

Mars Climate Orbiter - Spacecraft Assymetric solar array Attitude control coarse: jet thrusters fine: 3x flywheels Single onboard computer IBM PowerPC 20MHz 128MB RAM no tape or solid-state recorder 18MB flash 6

Mars Climate Orbiter – Flight to Mars 7

Agenda Spacecraft and its mission Mission failure Failure causes root cause contributing causes NASA’s mission planning paradigm 8

Mars Climate Orbiter - Mishap went off course by 100 km hit the atmosphere and burned ? passed the atmosphere and went on ? $ loss 9

Agenda Spacecraft and its mission Mission failure Failure causes root cause contributing causes NASA’s mission planning paradigm 10

Mission Failure – Root Cause In NASA nomenclature a root cause is: Along a chain of events leading to a mishap, the first causal action or failure to act that could have been controlled by policy/practice/procedure Root Cause – failure to use metric system in ground software files used in trajectory models 11

Mars Climate Orbiter - Spacecraft Assymetric solar array Attitude control coarse: jet thrusters fine: 3x flywheels AMD – Angular Momentum Desaturation 12

Mission Failure – Contributing Causes In NASA nomenclature a contributing cause is: A factor, event or circumstance which led directly or indirectly to the dominant root cause or which contributed to the severity of the mishap 13

Mission Failure – Contributing Causes Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 14

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 1 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 15

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 2 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 16

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 3 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 17

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 4 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 18

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 5 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 19

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 6 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 20

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 7 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 21

Mission Failure – Contributing Cause 8 Contributing causes undetected mismodelling of velocity changes navigation team unfamilliar with spacecraft failure to perform emergency trajectory correction poor system engineering process informal communication of project teams insufficient staff training insufficient navigation team stuffing poor verification of ground software 22

Agenda Spacecraft and its mission Mission failure Failure causes root cause contributing causes NASA’s mission planning paradigm 23

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Faster, better, cheaper“ approach 24

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Mission success first“ approach defining a minimum set of mission success criteria sufficient analysis and verification prior to launch assurance and robustness of the design ability to learn from failure 25

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Mission success first“ approach defining a minimum set of mission success criteria sufficient analysis and verification prior to launch assurance and robustness of the design ability to learn from failure 26

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Mission success first“ approach defining a minimum set of mission success criteria sufficient analysis and verification prior to launch assurance and robustness of the design ability to learn from failure 27

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Mission success first“ approach defining a minimum set of mission success criteria sufficient analysis and verification prior to launch assurance and robustness of the design ability to learn from failure 28

NASA’s Mission Planning Paradigm „Mission success first“ approach defining a minimum set of mission success criteria sufficient analysis and verification prior to launch assurance and robustness of the design ability to learn from failure 29

NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Thank you! 30