I just checked on the issue that I was recalling. It was the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 - about 18 years ago. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter).  
That's not to say there wasn't another one - there was a seemingly endless string of failures by nearly all the players that tried to visit Mars for what seemed to be decades. It had some speculating that there was intelligent intervention being caused by inhabitants of Mars!