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Software Error Likely Killed MGS Spacecraft
Aglassis writes "NASA investigators have determined that a software update performed in June of 2006 may have doomed the 10-year-old spacecraft. Apparently the software error caused the solar arrays to drive against a mechanical stop which then forced the spacecraft into safe mode. Unfortunately, after that the spacecraft's radiator was pointed at the sun which overheated the battery and destroyed it. Contact was lost with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in November 2006. NASA will form an internal review board to determine formally the cause of the loss of the spacecraft and what remedial actions are needed for future missions."
Why don't computers use NASA-quality hardware, ready for space?
Why don't all computers use just a single configuration (peripherals, cards, interfaces)?
The purpose of an operating system is so much wider than what the Mars Global Surveyor had to do.
Some expert is always trumpeting the fact that "Johnny can't program," to which many of us roll our eyes and go back to coding. But could this be a sign that the quality of the help NASA is hiring is such that these kinds of mistakes are now rampant? I mean, this could have been avoided if the code had been tested out on a full-scale mock-up of the machine, to verify that it did what it was supposed to do, before ever sending the commands to the actual machine. If anything, it's a QA failure.
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On a positive note, it has provided me an instructive example for when I help my teenagers with their math homework. If they say it's "almost" correct, I tell them that the guy who screwed up the Mars mission probably said the same thing.
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No sandbox can avoid the fact that one test was missing.
In other disciplines, the engineers ARE math guys. Face it, compared to other engineering types, software engineers and programmers are SLOPPY. This is because engineering has thousands of years worth of spectacular cork-ups with enormous death tolls to look back on, and engineering students are (I'm guessing, IANAE) shown horrific, traffic-safetyesque movies like Blood on the Protractor, Slide Rule Massacre, and London Bridge is Falling Down, Killing Litle Johnny's Entire Family.
Maybe we CS types need our own safety movies, perhaps When Buffers Attack!, Threads: Your Parallel Friends or Quagmires of Debugging DOOM?, or maybe Metric or Imperial: You Mean there's a Difference? Or maybe we need to recognize that many of us have the same awesome responsibility that other engineers do of protecting human lives from the consequences of our mistakes. I'm told that this point is hammered home in engineering schools, why not in CS departments?
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That said, you could get software written to this level of perfection if you wanted. It's easy- follow the space shuttle's team's example. You have a stable team of mature developers who work reasonable hours. You test the hell out of the software to the point a single bug in a test is reason to redo the software. You run the software on four identical computers and make sure they all agree.
Then you hire another entire team to write code that does the same thing, but otherwise has no contact with the first team. That software runs on a fifth computer that takes over if something happens to the other four.
Willing to pay for that?
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I wouldn't call it a failure of Computer Science; it's a QA failure without a doubt.
Mistakes happen when you code. Sure, you try to minimize them but even the most carefully designed code can't be guaranteed to be 100% error free. That's why you employ, presumably, a top-notch QA team to check and recheck, testing your "perfect" code in ways that perhaps you never even considered.
This is what you would expect in a terrestrial application. When the platform that your code is going to run on isn't bound to the same gravitational source that you are, you would think...you would *hope*...that the QA team might do an even more thorough job.
If this event is at all indicative of the QA efforts that NASA will be making for our return to the moon, perhaps we'd be better off staying at home.
For the uninformed, QA = Quality Assurance. A must-have for any self-respecting software model.
NASA has got it rough, has since the mid 70s. Their wildest successes are regarded as routine and hardly noticed by the public eye. Their failures, on the other hand, are spun to be the worst disasters in human history. Granted, when shuttles explode and people die, it's reasonable that the public be concerned. But it seems to me that for every 20 great things that NASA accomplishes, the media picks 1 failure (and sometimes blows that failure out of proportion) to rile the masses into a furious frenzy calling for the dissolution of NASA.
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In other disciplines, the engineers ARE math guys. Face it, compared to other engineering types, software engineers and programmers are SLOPPY. This is because engineering has thousands of years worth of spectacular cork-ups with enormous death tolls to look back on, and engineering students are (I'm guessing, IANAE) shown horrific, traffic-safetyesque movies like Blood on the Protractor, Slide Rule Massacre, and London Bridge is Falling Down, Killing Litle Johnny's Entire Family.
Engineering and applied mathematics are much more demanding than computer programming. Sure, one could argue that "computer science is math too", but my experience is that CS majors don't graduate with a strong math background. And even if they did once know some calculus and linear algebra, they were never required to apply it like an EE or Applied Math person would.
So while you could find a rigorous programmer or software engineer (and I use the term "software engineer" very loosely, because few individuals actually fit that description), it's often a lot easier to look for an engineer or applied mathematician with good programming skills. Their math and physics is usually significantly stronger, and they actually understand what they're programming.