Mariner 1 and the fatal typo

Transcript

On July 22, 1962, Mariner 1 rose from Cape Canaveral as NASA's first attempt to send a spacecraft close to Venus. But soon the rocket veered off course, as a guidance antenna problem and a software error combined to confuse its steering system. At 293 seconds after liftoff, the Range Safety Officer sent the destruct command, and the Atlas and Mariner 1 were destroyed for safety before they could threaten populated areas or shipping lanes. The mistake became famous as "the most expensive hyphen in history," though NASA later noted the real error was a missing overbar, not a hyphen.