NASA Draws On Open Source For Shuttle Bug-Tracking

thefickler writes "NASA has built a new software package to track problems with the Space Shuttle using open source tools from Mozilla. '[Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group] wouldn't say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.' The Space Shuttle Endeavor launched successfully on Friday, so the new system is being used to track any problems which may crop up in the current mission. As one commentator pointed out, 'A system like this could save more than money; it could save lives.'"

Comments

They're already using it

[Minwee]

Bug number one with the Space Shuttle is that "Microsoft has a majority market share in space travel".

Re:They're already using it

[peragrin]

you didn't think the shuttle columbia blew up because of foam hitting a tile did you?

Re:They're already using it

[PPH]

Both Columbia and Challenger failed because management overruled engineering and ordered that schedule be maintained in spite of quality concerns. Launch it now, land it now, release it now.

Hopefully this is only the beginning.

[Bentov]

I can only hope that more of this is to come; gotta save money someplace. Better to save my by actually saving money vs. saving money by taking it away from something else.

Re:Hopefully this is only the beginning.

[EpsCylonB]

I love free software but I don't think volunteer developers in an anarchist programming environment have a place in the development of a $2 billion system at the absolute pinnacle of aerospace design complexity.

Yeah but it will fine for the space shuttle. [ducks]

Re:Hopefully this is only the beginning.

[cyclone96]

I understand your point, however this particular software is basically a system for tracking vehicle "funnies" on the ground, it's not something that is in the loop of the vehicle flight software or something used to make critical decisions. The old system is pretty dated and unwieldy to use (I've used it, I work for NASA). We're obligated to try out cheaper alternatives to custom code to see if it works for us without compromising what we are trying to do.

Sometimes it does work for us - the Mission Control Center workstations and the onboard command and control laptops on the Space Station were all recently converted to Red Hat. It is in many ways better than the old proprietary unix solutions because with the source it's easy to do our own mods to the software. We still test the daylights out of it since that is critical software, but it's a lot easier to support since we have the source code and can do our own bug in-house bug investigations, patch it, or rip out things we don't want/need.

Re:PHLEGM already taken...

[Yetihehe]

In polish "praca" means "work". So probably it just works.

Good Company

[DynaSoar]

The order of magnitude under budget sounded familiar. Jefferson Lab Accelerator made a similar statement about at least some parts of the machine when they announced they had completed building and testing it and it was ready to fire up, ahead of schedule and under budget. I remembered they used government surplus and off-the-shelf parts as much as they could, but I didn't pay attention to the software. So I looked it up. HP-UX from 1987 to 2004, Red Hat since 2004. They talk about open source as a rationale, and specifically mention the Mozilla programs: http://users.cosylab.com/~mpelko/PCaPAC08/papers/mox03.pdf

Re:Good Company

[invisiblerhino]

A lot of science uses open source tools anyway, so this is only news in that it'll draw the public's attention to it. At CERN, the data analysis package (ATHENA) I worked on had a Python front end, used gnu tools (gcc, gdb), expressly encouraged physicists to use valgrind etc. I've forgotten how bug tracking worked, but I'm pretty sure it was something like Bugzilla. I'm not sure about the status (open source or not) of the full analysis package, but other stuff to come out of CERN (CERNLIB, Geant3) has been. It's all good.

Bugzilla? Really?

[rfreedman]

So, the rocket scientists looked at all of the available open-source bug trackers, and chose Bugzilla? Really?

Re:Bugzilla? Really?

[david.gilbert]

Hopefully the rocket scientists were doing rocket science while leaving the IT people that support the rocket scientists to choose the bug tracker.

How is this surprising?

[AndGodSed]

So, open source is cheaper, AND appears to give good results?

Why am I not surprised?

Re:PHLEGM already taken...

[ladybugfi]

Well if you say in Finnish "se prakaa", you mean that it breaks. Fitting...

Re:PHLEGM already taken...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

... which has the implications that polish astronauts will be allowed to fly in the Space Shuttle, while the Finns have to stay home?

It could have saved a lot of lives, actually

[Avatraxiom]

My company (Everything Solved), made PRACA along with NASA, and in one of the first meetings, a researcher at Ames told me that if a system like PRACA had always existed at NASA, then every major mishap in NASA's history could have been avoided. -Max

Re:It could have saved a lot of lives, actually

[khallow]

I strongly doubt it. For example, the two problems that killed astronauts on the Space Shuttles were known issues to the people making the big decisions. Better issue tracking might have helped address these problems before they killed someone, but it is unlikely.

Re:What were they using before...

[Avatraxiom]

They were using something like 40 different systems--a different one for practically each department and contractor at NASA. Some of them were pretty much using the technological equivalent of post-it notes next to their screens, and I've been told that some were keeping track of defects using paper files. -Max