Over the holidays I was in L.A. and a friend of mine who works at JPL on the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on MRO mentioned to me that there were problems with the instrument. I feel for the guy. The instrument that was first supposed to do this work was on the Mars Observer launched in 1992. That spacecraft was lost shortly before orbital insertion in 1993. The next time the instrument was flown was on the Mars Climate Orbiter launched in 1998. We all know about the metric error that lost that spacecraft in 1999. Finally, they got an intrument that does the same science in orbit with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And now this. Talk about bad luck.