Mars Climate Orbiter Cost Of Failure

1083 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Project quality management including quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities

MARS CLIMATE ORBITER
Anonymous Submission for Written Assignment Grading
University of the People

Abstract
The Mars Climate Orbiter cost NASA $327.6 million when it was destroyed in Mars’ atmosphere. Reasons determined to have contributed to the failed mission, point to insufficient quality management. Specifically, teams were not effectively communicating, training was inadequate, and technology was not verified. As a result, navigation data was based on English units in one group and metric in another group. The data was not converted. This paper proposes quality measure theories applied to contributing factors as recommended solutions.

Keywords: …show more content…

The Mars Climate Orbital mission loss was a significant part of the $327.6 million project cost for the orbiter and lander (NASA, n.d.). In order to implement the proposals, leadership must take responsibility to strategically align the focus of the teams, create strong project structure, train, communicate, measure and adjust. To achieve strategic quality management, start with the vision and mission, then emphasize value (Knowles, 2011). Strategic objectives are long term goals that specifically meet vision and mission statements (Petryni,2018). NASA’s program would need to implement a strategy for the scope of the entire project that aligns with the greater mission. Then the project can be broken down into smaller operations goals. Operations objectives plan how resources are used in production in a short-term routine (Petryni, 2018).
Conclusion
The Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) failure was a culmination of several deficiencies. Effective management, quality team resources and training, collaboration, analysis, and review were lacking. Teams did not know what other teams were doing. The MCO group did not present a viable process and was not prepared to resolve the crisis. Learning from this failure, NASA did take action and successfully complete other missions.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of the Smoking Gun Memos

    1223 Words  | 3 Pages

    Two tragic incidents, the Challenger Space Shuttle crash of 1986, and the Three Mile Island near meltdown of 1979, have greatly devastated our nation. Both these disasters involved failures of communication among ordinary professional people, working in largely bureaucratic companies. Two memos called the “Smoking Gun Memos,” authored by R. M. Boisjoly, of Morton Thiokol, and D. F. Hallman, of Babcook and Wilcox, will always be associated these two incidents. Unfortunately, neither of these memos were successful in preventing the accidents of the Challenger and the Three Mile Island near meltdown.

    Read More

  • Apollo 13: Gene Krantz's Team

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    At this time, he set the tone for importance of effective communication which also set the tone and importance of effective communication for the success of the mission. He set his expectations and the seriousness of the issue for the team. He deliberately and consciously, empowered the teams to come up with the best solutions and then used those recommendations to make the best decisions when trying to save the space craft. He made it very clear how each person’s expertise was crucial for all of the others’

    Read More

  • Sputnik's Effects

    1414 Words  | 3 Pages

    middle of paper ... ...2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. The "NASA History" Congressional Digest 90.7 (2011): 196-224. Academic Search Premier -. Web.

    Read More

  • The FCRs of Johnson Space Center

    1811 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Mission Control Center has been a vital organ for all human spaceflight since the mid 1960’s. It is Christopher Columbus Kraft’s vision that ultimately has developed what we refer to today as Mission Control. He envisioned utilizing a room which would contain a talented caliber of people who would be responsible for troubleshooting problems and supporting general flight activities. Ultimately each of these people would work under the guidance of a Flight Director who was essentially responsible for the entire mission. Today we know MCC to be a “"world class" spacecraft command and control facility which is able to support multiple spaceflight programs while reducing long term operations and maintenance cost.” It prov...

    Read More

  • The Case of the Indiana State Fair

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    The case of the Indiana state fair was a clear example of what happens when an organization does not have a crisis management team, plan, strategy, or crisis organizational learning experiences. As we observed, so many individuals from separate departments did not effectively communicate with one another. It sort of reminds me of the whole Titanic disaster, only smaller in nature. Where there were so many signs, and opportunities to prevent the crises from effecting them directly. Unfortunately there were too many missed opportunities, and eventually it was a race against time, and time won!

    Read More

  • The Space Shuttle Tragedy Of The Columbia And Challenger

    975 Words  | 2 Pages

    NASA has faced many tragedies during their time; but one can question if two of the tragedies were preventable by changing some critical decisions made by the organization. The investigation board looking at the decisions made for the space shuttle tragedies of the Columbia and Challenger noted that the “loss resulted as much from organizational as from technical failures” (Bolman & Deal, 2008, p. 191). The two space shuttle tragedies were about twenty years apart, they both had technical failures but politics also played a factor in to these two tragedies.

    Read More

  • Leadership

    2047 Words  | 5 Pages

    Another problem is ineffective communication. According Herman Aguinis, managers should listen to others, process the information and communicate effectively. They should also instill trust and provide proper direction to their team. As leaders, they should guide, develop and motivate to im...

    Read More

  • Lack Of Unity Of Command During Operation Anaconda

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    The command and control (C2) element had some flaws. The first being a failure in long distance

    Read More

  • McDonald’s Innovative Project Failure: Case Study

    2220 Words  | 5 Pages

    Flow of the information should have been better than this, top and bottom management didn’t work together properly resulting in failure.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Columbia’s Final Mission

    975 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage appeared he requested an additional imagery to obtain more information in order to evaluate the damage. This demonstrates that he actually tried to resolve the issue. However, due to absence of clear organizational responsibilities in NASA those images were never received. Since foam issue was there for years and risk for the flights was estimated as low management decided not to proceed with this request. After learning of management decision Rocha wrote an e-mail there he stated that foam damage could carry grave hazard and have to be addressed. At the same time this e-mail was not send to the management team. Organizational culture at NASA could be described as highly bureaucratic with operations under standard procedures only. Low-end employees like Rocha are afraid to bring any safety-related issues to the management due to delay of the mission. They can be punished for bringing “bad news”. This type of relationship makes it impossible for two-way communication between engineers and managers, which are crucial for decision-making in complex env...

    Read More

  • The Challenger and Columbia Shuttle Disaster: NASA

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    The National Academies Press (2012) NASA’s Strategic Direction and Need for a National Consensus retrieved from http//www.npa.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18248&

    Read More

  • The Strategy that Wouldn't Travel

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before a group can achieve the synergistic performance Jimenez is looking for it must meet three preconditions. First, team members have to approach the task at hand with the motivation to work cross-functionally and the confidence that they can produce effective solutions. In Wichita, much of the motivation came from the evident crisis in performance. Everyone in the plant knew that it was underperforming and there is no stronger motivation for action than a survival crisis.

    Read More

  • Case Study Of Reson

    1078 Words  | 3 Pages

    Often, the goals and visions of the projects are not clearly discussed. The project management team doesn’t understand the needs of the organization.

    Read More

  • Management By Objective MBO

    1305 Words  | 3 Pages

    The principle behind Management by Objectives (MBO) is to make sure that everybody within the organization has a clear understanding of the aims, or objectives, of that organization, as well as awareness of their own roles and responsibilities in achieving those aims. The complete MBO system is to get managers and empowered employees acting to implement and achieve their plans, which automatically achieve those of the organization.

    Read More

  • Mission and Vision Statement

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    The statement of a mission encourages one to progress to succession. A mission statement involves strategic planning in ...

    Read More

More about Mars Climate Orbiter Cost Of Failure

Open Document