Sep 30 1999
From The Space Library
NASA released preliminary findings of an internal peer review conducted at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) after the apparent loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft as it entered its orbit on 23 September. The results of the review indicated that "a failure to recognize and correct an error in a transfer of information between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California led to the loss of the spacecraft." The peer review discovered that "one team had used English units while the other used metric units for a key spacecraft operation." NASA's systems engineers had failed to detect the error. In addition to the JPL committee, NASA had formed a separate review committee of experts from within and outside of JPL and planned to establish an independent failure-review board shortly.
NASA announced that new findings from the Galileo spacecraft indicated the presence of sulfuric acid on the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Sulfuric acid is a corrosive chemical found in car batteries. Robert W. Carlson of NASA's JPL, the lead author of a paper published in the journal Science, was Principal Investigator for Galileo's Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, which located the chemical. The new findings corroborated Galileo's earlier spectrometer data analyses, suggesting the presence of sulfate salts on Europa. Despite indications that a liquid ocean may exist under Europa's crust, Carlson had initially thought the presence of sulfuric acid would end debate over whether it was possible for Europa to contain biological life. However, his colleague Kenneth H. Nealson suggested the opposite, remarking that sulfur and sulfuric acid are oxidants-energy sources known to us on Earth. Therefore, Nealson proposed that the findings should encourage scientists to search for "any possible links between the sulfur oxidants on Europa's surface and natural fuels produced from Europa's hot interior.”
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