The fate of NASA鈥檚 Mars Global Surveyor was sealed in June 2006 by a software patch uploaded to the spacecraft, according to a report released by a NASA investigation board.
MGS had been in space for nearly 10 years when NASA lost contact with it on 2 November. It was never heard from again.
The main culprit appears to be commands sent to the wrong memory address on the onboard computer. The commands were meant to fix problems related to MGS鈥檚 high-gain antenna. 鈥淭his had dire consequences for the spacecraft,鈥� the report states.
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As a result of the error, a solar array on the spacecraft tried to move further than was physically possible when ground controllers commanded it to swivel away from the sun on 2 November.
Because the solar array was 鈥渄riven against its hard stop鈥�, the spacecraft entered an automatic emergency mode, reorienting itself in space and so exposing one of its two batteries to the sun. The battery overheated, so the spacecraft stopped charging it.
Unfortunately, the other battery did not have enough power to keep the spacecraft going. Both batteries ran down within an estimated 12 hours, and MGS fell silent.
