Page 16 - BOSS Today Issue 24

BOSS Synergy Team

CREATING

SYNERGY

‘Stuff’ happens if data standards are not managed correctly...

n 23 September 1999, the atmosphere, stopping the team at Lockheed Martin in
O$25 million NASA Mars engine from completing its Denver and the flight team at
Climate Orbiter successfully burn. As a result, Climate NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
completed its 286 day journey Orbiter ploughed through in Pasadena, California.
to the red planet, fired its engine the atmosphere, continued
and pushed itself into an orbit out beyond Mars and headed ‘Stuff’ Happens…
about 60 km (36 miles) above towards the sun. All of this goes to prove that,
the surface. What was the reason for this as they say, ‘stuff’ happens,
Unfortunately this was about catastrophic, and very expensive, especially when it comes to
100 km closer to Mars than failure? For one key spacecraft sharing data between multiple
planned and about 25 km (15 operation, the Lockheed Martin users and systems.
miles) beneath the level at engineering team had used While this risk is more earth-
which the Orbiter could actually English units of measurement bound (and only slightly less
function properly. when building the Orbiter, expensive), it is equally present
Initial investigations found while the NASA team had used within the UK OP industry:
that the spacecraft’s propulsion the metric system. This had product data, attributes (product
system had overheated and prevented vital navigation data features, such as colour which
became disabled as it dipped from transferring between the are used to organise information
deeply into the Martian Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft about products to help

16 BOSS TODAY | October/November 2014

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