What is The Missing Overbar: How a Typo Destroyed NASA's Mariner 1 about?

A typographical error—a missing overbar—doomed NASA's Mariner 1, sparking a $80 million failure that reshaped software safety across space exploration.

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The Missing Overbar: How a Typo Destroyed NASA's Mariner 1

By Haporium Editorial•Feb 7, 2026•Updated Feb 7, 2026•

Mariner 1 - NASA Science

Nov 2, 2024 ... It was intended to perform a Venus flyby. The spacecraft was lost to a software glitch. Investigators found a typo had caused a fault in the ...

On This Day in 1962, NASA Launched and Destroyed Mariner 1

Sep 11, 2023 ... The fate of Mariner 1 was sealed when the Rate System hardware failed on launch. ... But because that overbar was missing, calculations on the ...

July 22, 1962: Mariner 1 Done In by a Typo | WIRED

Jul 22, 2009 ... When NASA programmers screw up, the consequences are a tad more dramatic, not to mention expensive. In this case, a “missing hyphen” in code ...