Best NASA Funny Moments
Traveling into space is a pretty serious job but every now and then NASA and its staff experience some funny moments that make you realize even professional astronauts make mistakes. Whether these funny moments were because of human error, or just something did not go right that day, they are still funny to think about.
1998 Mars Orbiter
Back in 1998, a mission was designed to take a close look at the climate history of Mars. Also, NASA was hoping to determine if the planet had ever sustained water on it. A $125 million dollar NASA craft was designed and creator especially for this mission. As the man-less craft headed for orbit, it ended up burning up in the atmosphere instead. This was an extremely expensive incident. As it turned out, the team of engineers that was in charge of this mission were not on the same page. One engineer did his calculations in English units of measure while another did his measurements in metric. The numbers just did not match up and the mistake was made. Luckily, no men were on board for this mission.
Mirror Mistake
For over twenty years now, the Hubble Space Telescope has been providing NASA with spectacular images of space. Back when it was created and installed, only blurry and distorted images were coming back. Three years went by, with NASA believing this Hubble Telescope was a compete disaster. As it turned out, one small mirror that was part of the telescope was defective. A quick repair took care of the whole issue and we still get images today from this tool. To think it all would have been discarded because of one small, broken part.
Cluster Disaster
Back in 1995, NASA played a role in the launch of a cluster of spacecraft that was sent into space by the ESA. One of the vehicles failed to reach orbit and it eventually self destructed when it got too far from its set course. This was because of a glitch nobody caught; very similar to what people believed would occur on December 31, 1999 at 11:59:59 P.M. Unfortunately, nobody considered the issue, but nobody was hurt.
As the years have gone on, the space program has learned many lessons. There is always a well educated, well trained staff of employees on hand to consider every issue that could take place. Unfortunately, every once in awhile, somebody makes a mistake and something slips through the cracks!
1998 Mars Orbiter
Back in 1998, a mission was designed to take a close look at the climate history of Mars. Also, NASA was hoping to determine if the planet had ever sustained water on it. A $125 million dollar NASA craft was designed and creator especially for this mission. As the man-less craft headed for orbit, it ended up burning up in the atmosphere instead. This was an extremely expensive incident. As it turned out, the team of engineers that was in charge of this mission were not on the same page. One engineer did his calculations in English units of measure while another did his measurements in metric. The numbers just did not match up and the mistake was made. Luckily, no men were on board for this mission.
Mirror Mistake
For over twenty years now, the Hubble Space Telescope has been providing NASA with spectacular images of space. Back when it was created and installed, only blurry and distorted images were coming back. Three years went by, with NASA believing this Hubble Telescope was a compete disaster. As it turned out, one small mirror that was part of the telescope was defective. A quick repair took care of the whole issue and we still get images today from this tool. To think it all would have been discarded because of one small, broken part.
Cluster Disaster
Back in 1995, NASA played a role in the launch of a cluster of spacecraft that was sent into space by the ESA. One of the vehicles failed to reach orbit and it eventually self destructed when it got too far from its set course. This was because of a glitch nobody caught; very similar to what people believed would occur on December 31, 1999 at 11:59:59 P.M. Unfortunately, nobody considered the issue, but nobody was hurt.
As the years have gone on, the space program has learned many lessons. There is always a well educated, well trained staff of employees on hand to consider every issue that could take place. Unfortunately, every once in awhile, somebody makes a mistake and something slips through the cracks!