In the first half of August 2023, there were reports about NASA accidentally losing contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft after sending the wrong command and later reports about regaining contact a few days later. Distances of spacecraft from Earth were expressed in billions of kilometres (as well as billions of miles). One thing that NASA and the media ignored is that the common prefixes of the metric system for the extremely large and the extremely small make the use of astronomical numbers unnecessary unlike the imperial system. This is one big advantage that the metric system has over the imperial system.
Continue reading “NASA Voyager 2 reports make poor use of the metric system”Tag: NASA
NASA’s Curiosity rover lands on Mars
A recent comment on UKMA’s Facebook page has prompted Metric Views to look into NASA’s latest mission to Mars. This is reported to have landed at 06:32 BST on Monday 6 August.
