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Mars Global Surveyor Died from Single Bad Command
wattsup writes "The LA Times reports that a single wrong command sent to the wrong computer address caused a cascade of events that led to the loss of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft last November. The command was an orientation instruction for the spacecraft's main communications antenna. The mistake caused a problem with the positioning of the solar power panels, which in turned caused one of the batteries to overheat, shutting down the solar power system and draining the batteries some 12 hours later. 'The review panel found the management team followed existing procedures in dealing with the problem, but those procedures were inadequate to catch the errors that occurred. The review also said the spacecraft's onboard fault-protection system failed to respond correctly to the errors. Instead of protecting the spacecraft, the programmed response made it worse.'"
That'll teach those NASA folks to stop just using "sudo" when a command doesn't work under regular user permissions...
It was the Tamil Tigers that hacked it, and inserted this insidious command! The threat of terrorists is everywhere! This would have been preveneted if we had kept up the war on terror.
/sudo shutdown -h now sent instead of /sudo shutdown -r now
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Egghead? No, no. It's the over developed cranium of our new martian overlords.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Admittedly offtopic, but...
Somehow I find it reassuring that NASA employs someone called "Dolly Perkins". It has that warm cosy 1950's feeling of Golden Age Space Exploration. Now, if only we could get the astronauts named "Buck", "Rock", or "Trent".
"Either that or every accident ever is caused by a single minor fault."
I agree. Otherwise WWII was caused by Hitler's mom having one too many drinks the night she met his dad.
*sniff*
You just made a beautifully appropriate commentary on a common fixture of my childhood. Dude.
I agree. Otherwise WWII was caused by Hitler's mom having one too many drinks the night she met his dad.
How can you come up with such a woefully shortsighted and limited in scope analysis? Honestly. There are at least two theories to work under for the cause of World War II.
WWII was caused by a series of reactions several billion years ago between amino acids. Or it was started 5000 years ago when God created Eve for Adam. Everything else in between is just a smattering of minor details.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Guess they weren't aware of the recall on those Dell batteries.
Oh, Gruyere, definitely. Emmentaler is fine, but certainly its popularity can be attributed merely to the region's inadequate defense of the name, allowing cheap knockoffs to proliferate.
*cricket* *cricket*
What?
> What was it this time, degrees vs radians?
Grads.