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Cassini Geyser-Tasting a Bust

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the techno-ageusia dept.

Maggie McKee writes "The Cassini spacecraft flew into the icy geysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wednesday in an attempt to figure out what they were made of, but a glitch prevented the probe from actually 'tasting' the plumes. An 'unexplained software hiccup' put the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) out of commission. Ironically, new software designed to improve the ability of the CDA to count particle hits may be to blame. Mission managers may try to re-attempt the plume fly-through later this year."

4 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This stuff doesn't bode well for software by Forrest+Kyle · · Score: 3, Informative

    NASA is probably not entirely to blame. They contract out so much stuff, that a lot of problems are created by interoperability issues between hardware and software designed by different companies.

  2. One Instrument Failed! by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 3, Informative

    OK, lookit. There are about a dozen instruments on Cassini. One (1) failed to return data on this pass. Yes, this pass was good for CDA, but it isn't the only instrument. It isn't even the only one that can sample the plume in situ. INMS, RPWS, MIMI, and CAPS all come to mind as candidates to give us useful information (INMS in particular can help clarify composition). All of these returned their data from what I've heard. (And no, that's all I can say until those teams want to speak up.)

    CDA's failure is unfortunate to be sure, but it isn't catastrophic. Could the entire news media please stop sensationalizing this?

  3. Re:What's with all the comments about NASA? by volcanopele · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, Cassini is a joint NASA/ESA project. The Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) was provided by ESA.

    --
    The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
  4. Re:This stuff doesn't bode well for software by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    It doesn't give me much confidence that we're heading towards applications and operating systems that won't crash anytime soon when we can't even get something this important right. It really makes me curious about the whole software quality assurance program at NASA.

    Hold your horses, Tex. It says in the article that they tuned the software to better pick up such particles. They may have had a big choice to keep it the way it was and play it safe, or get fancy to pick up much more data. You don't know what decisions they faced and are thus judging prematurely.

    Remember, the instruments weren't originally designed for such, so they may have had to "get creative". There's always risk in exploration.

    NASA has some of the best QA practices ever invented:

    http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html

    However, it takes time and money. I doubt the Geyser team had much time, for this pass-by is relatively recent in the probe plans.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.