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Object

Mariner 1

A circular spacecraft with two long, thin solar panels extends from either side against a black background.

A 1962 NASA probe intended to fly past Venus, destroyed by range safety 294 seconds after launch when its Atlas booster veered off course. The cause was a transcription error in the ground-based guidance equations, most often attributed to a missing overbar in the handwritten formulas. Arthur C. Clarke called it the most expensive hyphen in history, a phrase later applied, with some adjustment, to the Mars Climate Orbiter.

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