QUESTION:
Has the KAO ever failed a mission?

ANSWER from Wendy Whiting, KAO Mission Director on November 13, 1995:

There have been a whole range of successes and failures over the
long lifetime of the KAO.  I have to say though, that for the most part our
missions have
been highly successful.  Every one of the occultation missions, when we
have taken the KAO off to far-flung places on earth, has been a success.
Every one of the KAO missions to New Zealand has come home with lots of
good data on Southern Sky objects.  I think these successes can be
attributed to the hard work and attention to detail by the crew.  And,
probably a little good luck, too.

There are stories (part of the rich folklore of the KAO) about a
terrible mission to Pago Pago, American Samoa. This was in the early days
of the project, and I believe the trip was one the first Southern
hemisphere expeditions.   The idea was to get far enough south to be able
to see regions of the sky that we can't see from North America.  Pago Pago
is in a good spot, geographically, for this.  (We have since figured out
that New Zealand was an optimal place and set up Southern base there for
the KAO.  But they didn't know that then, and tried Samoa first!)

Anyway, Samoa has a tropical climate, and is very *wet*.  It rains
ALOT there!  Even when it's not raining the humidity is extremely high.  As
you may know, many electrical devices don't work well in high humidity.
And on this mission, much  of the KAO electronics failed to work.  On top
of that, it turned out that the one hotel available was infested with rats
(!) and other creepy crawly things.  To top it all off, the aircraft itself
developed a problem and was grounded, so they were all stuck there with no
hope of getting any data.  Legend has it that most people deserted the ship
and took commercial flights home, except of course for a few of the ground
crew, and the flight crew, who stuck around to get the airplane fixed and
fly it home.

The best thing you can do with a bad experience is learn from it,
and we did learn not to go back to Samoa for science missions.  The KAO has
occasionally stopped there for fuel, but not much more than that, over the
years!