text: Galaxy IV was a telecommunications satellite that was disabled and lost due to short circuits caused by tin whiskers in 1998. It was initially thought that space weather contributed to the failure, but later it was discovered that a conformal coating had been misapplied, allowing whiskers formed in the pure tin plating to find their way through a missing coating area, causing a failure of the main control computer. The manufacturer, Hughes, has moved to nickel plating, rather than tin, to reduce the risk of whisker growth. The trade-off has been an increase in weight, adding  per payload.