Last week NASA finally manage to guide a satellite into orbit around the planet Mars. From its position in space the satellite will collect geological and geographical information on the red planet, transmitting its findings back to Earth.
There were hugs and cheers in mission control when the reports came in that the satellite had successfully taken up it's position and NASA declared the mission a great success.
Chances are that the celebrations were as much out of relief as anything else when you consider the failure of previous missions, which ended in embarrassing disaster.
In 1999 NASA were left with egg on their faces when the Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed after falling out of orbit. Investigations proved that the problem started when the design team and computer programmers got their figures wrong.
They revealed that a mix up had occurred when some parts of the team began using inches instead of centimeters in their calculations, meaning that the satellite went way off target and was eventually destroyed. A very expensive mix up indeed.
Could that have happened to you though? Do you struggle with numbers when you need to calculate something at work? Perhaps someone you know always ends up buying the wrong amounts when they do the stationary orders because they've got their sums wrong. It might not be as costly as crashing a multi million dollar satellite but it can cause just as many problems for your company.
It's never too late to try and brush up your word an number skills. learndirect have a range of courses for adults who feel they ought to improve their skills with things like spelling and mental arithmetic. Why not take a look in the course catalogue on this site to see if there is a number skills course to suit you or someone you know? If you want to know what sort of thing to expect you can look at some of the free tasters elsewhere on the site.
Remember - if someone suddenly puts you in charge of a satellite you are going to want to get your sums right aren't you?