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ISS Computer Failure
A number of readers wrote us with news of the computer problems on the International Space Station. Space.com has one of the better writeups on the failure of Russian computers that control the ISS's attitude and some life-support systems. Two out of six computers in a redundant system cannot be rebooted. The space shuttle Atlantis may have its mission extended until the problem is fixed. A NASA spokesman was optimistic that the problem can be resolved; worst-case scenario would be for the shuttle to evacuate everyone onboard the ISS. Engineers are working on the theory (among others) that the failure may have been triggered by new solar panels installed earlier in Atlantis's mission.
In Soviet Russia, computers control YOUR attitude. Oh, wait... nm
~Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
They need the russian guy from armageddon to bang on the side of the computers!
I know all of my Windows computers were anxious to reboot yesterday.
Maybe NASA didn't pay for Soyuz Ultimate Edition, with support for additional solar panels.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"...control the ISS's attitude..."
So the ISS is throwing a temper tantrum? Just put it in time out
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Two out of six computers in a reduntant system cannot be rebooted.
NASA should have invested in a redundant system, rather than buying a cheap grey-market knockoff.
Like many Slashdotters, when the computers at my job fail, my attitude tends to become uncontrollable as well.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Hopefully they're starting with their DFMEA documentation... "guessing" at the problem and having "theories" is probably not a good way to go. Also, it's apparently a common-mode failure, which you shouldn't have in a safety-critical system; generally this is avoided by having different computer hardware and/or completely different code to do the same tasks.
Quite unfortunate that it seems like systems engineering is lacking in more and more disciplines recently, although I suppose it makes good systems engineers more valuable.
My list for this would be something like: "Computer doesn't boot." Possible reasons: "No Power", "Insufficient power", "Corrupt memory", "Broken circuits", etc. Then you go down that tree further and find the root cause. The most disturbing thing is that they had such a major common-mode failure...whatever happened to the "no single points of failure" mantra?
* sigh *
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
No, no--I know is sounds crazy. But hear me out. Maybe we could actually pursue something NEW--you know, dare to violate that 30-year-old sacrosanct NASA policy of just repeating themselves over and over again and wasting trillions of $ on contractors and grandiose promises which never amount to squat.
Just a thought.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The stated worst case scenario is that the ISS will need to be evacuated, but if the remaining gyros are being overwhelmed, might the station enter an unrecoverable spin state before the problem is resolved?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Really, does the fact that the computers are Russian matter? Broken software is broken software, and broken hardware is broken hardware.
It's not like the Russians would send crappy stuff up to the ISS anyways, they would put all their best into it. And the Russians have a history of having some excellent mathematicians.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They're all made in Taiwan!!
It's obvious they are not running Solaris.
From TFA:
"The lights, the fans and, thank God, the potty, all those things are working," Suffredini said.
Well at least he has his priorities in order. God knows you don't want anyone looking into the Hubble to see the ISS going by with your ass hanging out of the window.
From the article: The computer failures have left the station without the use of its Russian attitude control
I guess the liquor cabinet door in the ISS is computer controlled.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Lets not forget all the problems the american space shuttles have had recently, while the russian soyuz capsules have been working well for many years.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've been waiting for this story to hit /. - didn't take long... I have to admit that using the ISS as an excuse to hide the real issue(s) and buy time is creative, tho :)
o s/070610/070610_tear_bcol_11a.standard.jpg - photo of hole/tear in thermal blanket
...the real information comes out and we find that something bad did indeed happen; they knew about it all along, and they were/are once again clueless as to how to deal with the situation, claiming the shuttle is sooooo complicated or sooooo old or soooo expensive, when all they really want to do is CYA.
When the shuttle launched last week, the headline quoting NASA was 'perfect launch'.
Then, we heard this: "NASA says shuttle damage is not serious"
Huh? I thought it was 'perfect'...?
'NASA studies gap in shuttle's shields' - "not appearing to be an urgent problem" - "Other than that, the vehicle is very clean. NASA's Shannon said." http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Phot
"The first shuttle launch of the year helped put NASA back on track after a run of bad luck and scandal on the ground during the first half of the year."
Next, we get this: "NASA checks into potential hit on shuttle"
"Sensors on the shuttle Atlantis have recorded hits on the leading edges of the wings, around the area where Columbia suffered fatal damage four years ago, NASA officials said Tuesday. However, they emphasized that the hits probably did no damage to Atlantis."
"What we have seen does not indicate that we have been hit by anything," NASA's Shannon said."
Huh? Do we have a hit or not...? Shannon has quite the golden tongue.
My point is that NASA always says "perfect launch", even when they are sitting on data that suggests damage or problems. And - here we go again.
NASA does everything they can to shine up their process and actions to avoid even hints of trouble. They are more worried about bad press and how the public views their capabilities than they are for the short term. This story about a computer glitch on the ISS is a smokescreen to cover their asses while they try to fix whatever is wrong on the Shuttle. Hit or no hit, something is amiss.
Sooner or later... Always
The mindset-climate at NASA has always been the same and always will be the same. Hubris.
I know you're joking but I'm a sucker so here goes: attitude means, "which direction is it pointed" They use big gyroscopes to keep the station oriented so that the solar panels can track the sun.
Maybe the new solar panels are a new input to the attitude program - "I am a new solar panel, I need to be pointed this way so that my 1 axis motor can track the sun"
Hello, my name is Narinda and I am your technical support representitive, now just insert the recovery disk and call me back in two hours.
..
Tech Support in Space
davecb5620@gmail.com
No.
On NASA's manned space equipment you will find no software that is not controlled by NASA. These folks don't just run a few tests. They spend thousands of dollars per SLOC in testing. They actually mathematically prove their software's correctness. Perhaps the Russian agency's quality isn't quite as high, but I still doubt their (or anyone else's) systems onboard the ISS have any OS at all. Most likely they are all custom embedded systems.
I'd council against jumping to conclusions about the cause of this solely based on the Russian origin of these systems. I remember a lot of people did that with the early Ariane crash based on it being written in Ada, and ended up looking pretty silly when the problem turned out to be some ported code that wasn't rewritten properly for the new platform.
The question is what benefit we currently expect to derive from the station (as it will exist through the remainder of its troubled assembly and expected lifespan). If our estimate of that benefit, made today, is valued less than our current estimate of the cost of completetion, then completing the station is just throwing good money after bad. To say that we've already spent too much to stop now is just silly. Of course, with a situation like this, it's tough to argue that you could really accurately estimate either side of the equation, so speaking as an economist, it beats the hell out of me.
"I'm sorry comrade, but I'm afraid I can't do that."
Not quite...
"I'm sorry comrade, In space, gyroscopes, turn you"
sigh, life is balanced again.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
The first piece of the space station was Zarya, the Russian control module that was launched into orbit November 20, 1998. A few weeks later, on December 4, 1998, the U.S. module Unity was launched into space. On December 7, 1998, the two modules were connected.
That makes the ISS just over 8 years in service.
How old is Atlantis?
Space Shuttle Atlantis has completed 27 flights, spent 220.40-days in space, completed 3468 orbits, and flown 89908732 miles in total, as of September 2006. Atlantis visited visited MIR in 1997!
Atlantis is 23 years old as of last April. 21 years in service. More than twice as old as the ISS.
Now, tell again - which is the real bucket of bolts? ISS or Atlantis?
Many of NASA computers on spacecraft use a long-tested version of realtime UNIX called VxWorks from Charles River. It doesnt nexcessarily have the fancy stuff in modern *nix's, but is fairly reliable. Even that has been known to fail. The flash memory driver in the Martian Rovers had a bad free-list routine which shut them down for several weeks near the beginning of their mission after the flash memory filled up. A fix was uploaded. Flash memory was relatively new and hadnt been tested as much as the rest of the system.
Wait a Minit !
First about the "all software is NASA controlled" assertion.. Well.. While I was watching NASA TV, I caught a glimpse of one of the astronauts obviously attempting to retrieve some e-mail from his laptop.. And then complaining over the com that he was getting a "you can only have one instance of Outlook running" - ground control advised for a laptop reboot, but the guy upstairs wasn't too keen on doing that (apparently, to him, this meant it was a server problem !) - the capcom person at that time then seemed to be taking the diplomatic side and answered : "lemme check" !
Second, you claim that NASA mathematically prove software correctness.. However, it is a known fact that this is an impossible thing to do (Rice's theorem)..
The fact that these system have no OS is debatable ! They at least need some system oriented code to interface between the hardware and the software (call it OS, library, firmware, whatever !) - but it seems that even getting the thing to initialize is failing..
Last, everyone is talking about the 'russian' computers.. Well, this guy last night in the press conference did state these were actually "western style" *european* computers !
--Ivan
I caught a glimpse of one of the astronauts obviously attempting to retrieve some e-mail from his laptop.. And then complaining over the com that he was getting a "you can only have one instance of Outlook running" - ground control advised for a laptop reboot, but the guy upstairs wasn't too keen on doing that
The personal communication laptops the astronauts have are windows machines. The machines that run both ISS and Shuttle are **not**. They are derivatives of UNIX, and, as grandparent said, have many eyes and many thousands of dollars poured into each line of code. There was a good article not too long ago in Fast Company about the shuttle coding team.
From the article: the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors. That's impressive. The same care went into the ISS computers, at least from the US's side. I can't speak for Russia as I don't have that level of familiarity with them.
Last, everyone is talking about the 'russian' computers.. Well, this guy last night in the press conference did state these were actually "western style" *european* computers !
The Russian computers failed. The US computers have 'taken over' temporarily. Why? Because we have this nice little satellite network called TDRSS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System) which lets us relay communications with shuttle over the vast majority of the orbit. Russia does not. They can only communicate over line of sight, which is a few times each day for about 8 or so minutes.
All the russian computers are down again. There is a suspicion that the magnetic field generated by the new solar rays is interfering with their operation. If that's true then the ISS is in a bit of a pickle, since without the new solar arrays there's no power for the additional science modules that need to be added to the ISS, which means no need to fly the shuttle (or anything else) there anymore. Disconnecting the power from the new arrays may allow the computers to operate, but you're left with an ISS that close to useless.
If disconnecting the power doesn't fix them problem, then the situation is even worse... the station will have to be evacuated next Wednesday, and would no longer have attitude control. It is likely that it would tumble out of control before any new mission could be made, making it impossible to dock the the ISS and probably resulting in its eventual re-entry.
Things are not looking good.
I suspect you're joking or trolling, but the "billion-dollar space pen" is an urban myth.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You're an idiot. That's a peeled away thermal blanket on top of a carbon honeycomb structure.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The press is so bad you actually accused NASA of making up a story about computer trouble.
The press is bad.
It is damned unfortunate that people actually believe the press, when year after year story after story is revealed to be fiction from lede to -30-.
That the hard work of thousands of smart people gets shat upon by fraudulent airheads.
That it doesn't matter how great a job they do every tiny issue becomes a real threat to funding.
Because the press is bad.
Service restart isn't the problem. The problem is copying kernel state.
The kernel holds a lot of information, such as which processes are running, memory allocation, drivers etc. For a true in-place switchover to a new kernel (i.e., all programs keep running as if nothing happened), all that information has to be copied over.
The other option is to load the new kernel image to memory, shut down all processes and unload drivers, jump to new kernel and start a standard initialization. That would be the same as doing a 'shutdown -r', except that the new kernel is loaded by the old kernel instead of by the BIOS.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Meeting up with a reentry capsule in earth orbit is an excellent idea. The ISS doesn't do anything useful here though. You can just meet the capsule.