Human Error May Have Doomed Mars Probe
`NASA is investigating whether incorrect software commands may have doomed the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which abruptly fell silent last year after a decade of meticulously mapping the Red Planet.
The space agency said that theory is just one of several that may explain the probe’s failure. NASA on Wednesday announced the formation of an internal review board to investigate why the Global Surveyor lost contact with controllers during a routine adjustment of its solar array. [..]
The software was aimed at improving the spacecraft’s flight processors. Instead, bad commands may have overheated the battery and forced the spacecraft into safe mode [..]’
