LOS ANGELES (AP) - A mixup over metric and English measurements likely caused the loss of the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter as it started to circle the planet last week, officials said Thursday. The error caused the probe to fly too close to the red planet, causing the spacecraft to break up or burn up in the Martian atmosphere that it had been designed to study, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. Two teams - one at JPL and another at Lockheed Martin in Colorado where the spacecraft was built - used different measurement systems, and quality control failed to notice the discrepancy, said Edward Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science. The mistake was made as commands were being sent to the probe to place it in proper orbit around Mars.

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