Why ISS Computers Failed

Geoffrey.landis writes "It was only a small news item four months ago: all three of the Russian computers that control the International Space Station failed shortly after the Space Shuttle brought up a new solar array. But why did they fail? James Oberg, writing in IEEE Spectrum, details the detective work that led to a diagnosis." The article has good insights into the role the ISS plays as a laboratory for US-Russian technology cooperation — something that is likely to be crucial in any manned Mars mission.

Comments

Power off command

[jsse]

Also, in a shocking design flaw, there was a "power off" command leading to all three of the supposedly redundant processing units. That reminds me many years ago, when my friend worked as a programmer in a major bank writing small programs for an online international financial system. He issued an 'shutdown' command through JCL(Job Control Language) and that really shutdown the entire system. He didn't realize he had the privilege to issue administration commands. Instead of reporting the crisis to his manager, he hide away until someone figured out what's going on. Needless to say, my friend was fired.

Years later I met his manager, he told me that my friend could have been promoted for discovering one of the biggest loophole ever in the bank's history, if he had reported the problem immediately. Though the unexpected shutdown caused considerable damage, it could have saved billions from real break-in with this loophole.

That's a lesson that every engineer should have been learned. :)

Re:Urgh.

[Jugalator]

I agree... That's what first came to mind after having watched this incident unfold live. What he fails to mention is that the Russian engineers were always open to suggestions and they cooperated pretty well when they needed to discuss the problems. The Russians were also working nearly 24/7 on trying to find and resolve the problems and come up with theories before they were running out of time. The article makes it sound like they early on got locked into "blaming the Americans" or something. It was merely one theory that was tossed around and discussed, and diagnosed early on. If there seem to be a power failure (which it ended up being all about), surely one logically suspected culprit could be a power feed problem?