NASA lost $80,000,000 after an employee missed one single punctuation mark in their coding
Topics: Technology, Science
Maxine Harrison
Featured Image Credit: STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Technology, Science
In high school, or even elementary school, we are all told the importance of adhering to the grammatical rules of the English language.
But whilst we are all guilty of a typo here and there among text messages with friends, we don’t expect it to have dramatic consequences to the point where we find ourselves out of pocket.
Well, unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to NASA on July 22, 1962 on its first planetary mission. This was a mission that had been planned for a long time prior to this date, and as a result, many NASA scientists were eager to see it succeed because of its competitor at the time, Russia, having already been attempting to send rockets into space.
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So, they were in a Space Race with the US. That morning, at 9:21 am, the rocket Mariner 1 launched from its Cape Canaveral pad in Florida.
This particular launch had a specific goal in mind, which was a flyby over the planet Venus. However, as well as carrying out this main mission, Mariner 1 was also collecting data to better equip scientists and astronomers to have a more comprehensive understanding of the solar system.
The reason this information was important is because it would also help NASA refine construction for other spacecraft that would be designed for similar future missions. But all the eagerness for this mission led to sheer disappointment due to one simple grammar mistake.
Just a few seconds after takeoff, Mariner 1 changed direction from the planned journey towards Venus. As much as the scientists tried to rectify this issue, they couldn’t - they had lost utter control of the rocket.
Talk about 'Houston, we have a problem'. If the rocket continued on the course it was taking, it would mean it would crash in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, right in the middle of the heavily trafficked shipping lanes.
In an impossible situation like this, the safety flight officer was left with just one option: to destroy the spacecraft with one hit of a button. At 9:26am the Mariner 1 rocket was destroyed purposefully in space.
And the reason for this error that veered the spacecraft off course was because of the simplest error in a coding programme.
Mariner 1 cost NASA $80 million to build but a missing hyphen-shaped symbol from one of the guidance program characters is what is responsible for the rocket’s misguided journey and untimely demise.
This situation is, understandably, often referred to as 'the most expensive hyphen in history' because of how much it cost NASA to build the rocket.
An expensive price to pay for a grammar mistake... let's hope they learned their lesson.