Fergie's Tech Blog

NASA Spacecraft Crashes Into Satellite

An AP newswire article by Alicia Chang, via ABC News, reports that:

A robotic NASA spacecraft designed to rendezvous with an orbiting satellite instead crashed into its target, according to a summary of the investigation released Monday.

Investigators blamed the collision on faulty navigational data that caused the DART spacecraft to believe that it was backing away from its target when it was actually bearing down on it.

"The inaccurate perception of its distance and speed … prevented DART from taking effective action to avoid a collision," the summary said.

posted by Fergie @ 5/15/2006 08:05:00 PM