In 1998 NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter. When it reached Mars nine months later, it got too close to the planet’s atmosphere and burned up. This was caused by a miscalculation: English units of measurement were used instead of metric. The destroyed spacecraft cost $125 million to build.

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15 Questions About Units of Measurement Answered

Units of measurement help us through our daily lives by standardizing how we discuss things such as someone’s height, the size of our shoes, the weight of that handful of fruit in the supermarket, and the temperature outside. Earlier versions of these questions and answers first appeared in the