mission purpose
The planet that Orbiter was meant to explore and analyze.
What is Mars?
The company that NASA commissioned to build the spacecraft's hardware and the internal systems.
What is Lockheed Martin?
Orbiter executed this procedure, which utilizes drag and friction from the atmosphere of a planet to slow down its speed and enter a controlled orbit.
What is aerobraking?
The part of Mars that Orbiter burned up in.
What is Atmosphere?
The unit system that the NASA controllers mistakenly used, instead of International (SI).
What is the Imperial / English Units / System?
The year in which the Orbiter was launched.
What is 1998?
What the fuel/gas on a spacecraft that is burned to move it in a certain direction is referred to.
What is propellant?
What is engine burn / retrograde burn?
The amount of dollars (in 2026 value) that NASA lost from the loss of Orbiter and Lander combined. (+/- 100 million).
What is $700 million? (accept $600-800 million)
Name a country other than the United States that primarily (not mixed) uses the Imperial System.
The sister spacecraft to Climate Orbiter from the same mission, meant to roam the surface of the planet as opposed to hovering in the atmosphere.
The weight of the spacecraft including propellant at the start of the mission (+/- 50 kg).
What is 638 kg? (accept 580 kg to 690 kg).
The concave structure that is used to concentrate radio waves into a narrow, concentrated beam so that Orbiter could efficiently communicate with NASA controllers.
What is satellite dish?
The measurement that was incorrectly calculated, also defined as the change in momentum of an object.
What is impulse?
The year in which NASA completely switched all of its systems to purely metric units.
When a spacecraft travels behind a planet, completely hiding it from Earth's view and impeding any communication radio waves.
What is occultation?
The structure that was attached to take daily atmospheric weather images and high-resolution surface images.
What is Color Imager?
How many months it took for the spacecraft to get from Earth to Mars (+/- 1 month).
What is 9 Months?
The three dimensions of movement that thrusters on the craft are meant to control.
What is yaw, pitch, roll?
The mission was criticized for being rushed and for having a budget shortage of roughly this size (in percentage, +/- 5).
What is 30%? (accept 25 - 35%)
The Orbiter and Polar Lander mission was preceded by the landing of this rover, which was the first man-made object to ever land on Mars.
What is Sojourner?
The structure that was attached to measure atmospheric temperature, water vapor abundance, and dust concentration.
What is Infrared Radiometer?
The amount of minutes that it took for communication radio waves to reach Earth from Mars during the aerobraking portion of the mission (+/- 2 minute).
What is 11 minutes? (accept 9 through 13)
The two units (both metric and imperial) that mismatched, causing the failure.
What is N*s (Newton seconds) and lbf*s (pound-force seconds)?
What NASA was criticized for lacking amongst the subteams of the mission. (HINT: both start with v's)
What is verification and validation?