The very first book on space systems failures written from an engineering perspective.

There have been many remarkable achievements, such as the Galileo probe which parachuted into Jupiter's atmosphere, to the joy of the engineers who built it. But there have also been many humiliating failures. Sometimes the cause is a silly procedural error, such as a minus sign instead of a plus sign in a computer program, or a mix up between Imperial and Metric units. The Russian craft Phobos 1 was lost en route to Mars after being sent an incorrect command, because the spacecraft's computer was insufficiently robust to reject it. More recently, NASA has suffered the loss of several missions to Mars, including one due to a simple computer programming error. In Space Systems Failures, David Harland (here working with co-author Ralph Lorenz) describes the many quite fascinating tales of woe involving failures of rockets, satellites and deep space missions in his inimitable style, providing a unique insight into the trials and tribulations of exploration at the high frontier.

Launch vehicles.- The missiles.- The Shuttle.- Back to expendables.- Heavyweights.- Lightweights.- Boom and bust.- The Chinese experience.- The current crop.- Satellites and space probes.- Failure and redundancy.- Propulsion system failures.- Attitude control system failures.- Electrical failures.- Environmental failures.- Structural failures.- Failures on the ground.- Operator and software errors.- Conclusions.