Subsequent popular accounts of the accident often referred to the erroneous character as a "hyphen" (describing the missing component of the symbol) rather than an "R-bar"; this incorrect mischaracterization was fueled by Arthur C. Clarke's description of the malfunction as "the most expensive hyphen in history". Legacy The loss of America's first interplanetary spacecraft constituted an $18.5 million ($ in today's dollars) setback for NASA. The incident underscored the importance of a thorough pre-launch debugging of software as well as a need to engineer programs such that minor errors could not cause catastrophic failures. The procedures implemented as a result served NASA well, ultimately salvaging the Project Apollo Moon landings; though there were program errors in the Lunar Excursion Module software during descent, they did not cause mission failure. With the logic error quickly discovered, no undue delay was necessary. The identical Mariner 2 was already on hand, and a second launch from the same pad was manageable before the end of August. On August 27, 1962, Mariner 1's sister spacecraft was successfully launched, becoming on December 14, 1962, the first spacecraft to return data from the vicinity of Venus. See also List of missions to Venus List of software bugs References External links NASA's article about the Mariner I Mariner 1 Mission Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration RISKS Digest detail about the Mariner I failure Missions to Venus Mariner program Spacecraft launched in 1962 Satellite launch failures Spacecraft launched by Atlas-Agena rockets Software bugs de:Mariner#Mariner 1 und 2