NASA Mars craft failure

Human error caused NASA's Mars Global Surveyor to fail in November after the spacecraft spent nearly a decade mapping the Martian surface from orbit, the U.S. space agency said on Friday.
Faulty changes made last June to its computer memory and a November 2 command helped cause battery failure in the craft, which had far exceeded its original two-year mission.
November 2 was the last date when the Mars Global Surveyor communicated with Earth. Within 11 hours, depleted batteries probably rendered it unable to control its orientation in orbit.

On that day, ground personnel had ordered the craft to carry out a routine adjustment of its solar panels. The review board said the craft repositioned itself in a way that exposed one of its two batteries to direct sunlight, causing that battery to overheat and leading both batteries to deplete.

The team responsible for the spacecraft followed procedures but these were not sufficient to detect errors that had taken place.