What happens to the chief of a space mission at NASA if it results a disaster?

Question

i.e The Mars Orbiter mission

The Mars Polar Lander mission

Answer 1

There are many "chiefs" on a space mission. The mission and spacecraft are broken down into hundreds of parts and sub parts.

If a mission fails, data is carefully analyzed to find out exactly what went wrong. There are people that coordinate these activities. If the failure can be traced to negligence, that person could face disciplinary action .

Answer 2

Chief screwups get medals, promotions & bonuses.  

Answer 3

For the specifics of your question try searching on the following names:

JPL Project Manager for Mars Surveyor 98 (Both Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander) : John B McNamee

Lockheed Martin project manager: Ed Euler

Head of JPL: Ed Stone

Head of NASA: Dan Goldin

Goldin left NASA in November 2001 after 9 years at the helm.

Stone left JPL in 2001 to return to Caltech after a 10 year term.

McNamee had been appointed as the manager of Outer Planets/Solar Probe after the launch of the Mars Surveyor 98 spacecraft.  These missions never flew, though Pluto/Kuiper Express was reborn as New Horizons and Solar Probe has been reborn as Solar Probe+ but the contract has been awared to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

He served as Project Manager for the Deep Impact mission for a time before being promoted to be the program manager for the Discovery/New Frontiers program.

Euler had also been associated with the contruction of the lander proposed for 2001 which had been constructed along the same lines as Polar Lander.  The launch was cancelled following the failures but proposals were later solicited for use of the hardware under the Mars Scout program.  It is now on Mars in the form of the Mars Phoenix Lander.

Answer 4

Review Eugene F. Kranz "Tough and Competent" speech. That's how things used to be at NASA, but not how things are there today. If you want to know what NASA does when things go wrong in a big way, listen to Roger Boisjoly tell you about the way NASA administrators behaved after the Challenger Disaster.

Answer 5

they cut their head off and stick it on a pole at the entrance to the johnson space center.