When the word Juno is used in Canada, it typically refers to a Normandy beachhead stormed by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on June 6, 1944, in an operation the world knows as D-Day.

This summer, however, the Juno Jupiter probe – named for the Greek god Jupiter’s wife, not the Ellen Page movie – brought the name back into our collective conscience.

The NASA space probe entered the gas giant’s orbit in early July, taking up station in a polar region to study the planet’s composition, gravity, and magnetic field. It’s quite an achievement for a craft solely powered by solar arrays, given the distance was a staggering 2.8 billion kilometres (1.74 billion miles).

It’s also a step up for the space exploration community at large, which famously failed to convert vital measurements from imperial to metric during the flight of the Mars Climate Orbiter. In 1999 NASA lost the $125 million craft because the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Lockheed Martin Astronautics never got on the same page over which measurement system was supposed to be used.

It caused John Logsdon, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, to tell the press, “That was so dumb.”

In fact, it sounds like something that could happen here.

The metrification of Canada, which started in the 1970s, still has not totally taken hold. It’s why I own two sets of wrenches, two sets of sockets, and have no idea how much I weigh in kilograms. Multiple generations of Canadians have grown up with a foot in each camp.

Canadian shops actually have to work in both units. Chances are if you ship product to the U.S., your parts will be stated in feet and inches. However, if your shop is in the Toyota supply chain, for example, or shipping to Europe, everything will be spec’d out in millimetres.

But standardization is important.

After all, along with sort, set in order, shine, and sustain, it makes up the methodology called 5S.

True standardization using the metric system in Canada likely won’t occur until the U.S. (one of the last bastions of imperial measurements, along with Myanmar and Liberia) formally switches to metric.

But don’t hold your roughly 6 litres of breath waiting for that to happen.