Mariner 1 Lost to Missing Hyphen

On July 22, 1962, NASA's Mariner 1 spacecraft was destroyed less than five minutes after launch due to a guidance system failure. A single missing hyphen in the backup code prevented the system from filtering out spurious data, which caused the rocket to veer off course and forced controllers to trigger its self-destruct. The mistake cost more than $130 million in today's dollars, making it one of the most expensive typos in history.

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