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Kepler Recovers After 144 Hour "Glitch"
coondoggie writes "There was likely a pretty big sigh of relief at NASA's Ames Research Center this week as the group's star satellite Kepler recovered from a glitch that took it offline for 144 hours. According to NASA the glitch happened March 14, right after the spacecraft issued a network interface card (NIC) reset command to implement a computer program update. During the reset, the NIC sent invalid reaction wheel data to the flight software, which caused the spacecraft to enter safe mode, NASA stated."
Alright, who hit F8 while it was booting up???
Betcha whoever hit F12 during POST got fired.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
You need safe mode with networking, not just plain old "Safe Mode" guys!
Here's to the crazy ones
Did they try turning it off and then on again?
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
TFA makes it sound like it wasn't really down. "During recovery actions, NASA's Deep Space Network was used to downlink telemetry and began recovery of files to help engineers figure out what happened".
TFA fails to explain why the process took 6 days. If I had to guess I'd say the humans spent almost a full week analyzing the data they downloaded, and making sure it was ready to go back online.
It doesn't sound like it actually lost contact during the 6 days. TFA fails at a journalistic basic. They have the "who, what, when", but are missing some "why".
Another 3 hours and it would have had to cut off its arm to get back online.
This is the first sign of the upcoming invasion in 2012. Our satellites are being "tested". ;-)
You got to release and RENEW, not just release.
If it had gone into safe mode for more than ## Days does it have a "return to factory defaults" subroutine?
but I thought Johannes Kepler was dead
Dell Tech Support: Hi! This is David from Colorado. How may I help you today? ....
NASA: Hi, Yes: Our satellite keeps freezing up on reboot.
Dell Tech Support: Allright let me pull up your information...
Dell Tech Support: Ok, sir, let's see if we can try and troubleshoot it over the phone, if not then you will have to ship it to our repair techs
NASA: ?????!?!?!?
Dell Tech Support: Allright let's start by checking for connection cables. Is the satellite plugged in to the outlet?
NASA: FUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm glad to see it's still more reliable than Windows.
so that why I was getting so much 771 errors over past few days.
Turns out the NIC was working just fine. They had to power cycle the WRT54G in Houston to get it to reconnect.
I thought we would actually get the NASA link http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20110321.html which FWIW is almost verbatim to the NetworkWorld link shows. Copy pasta FTW!
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Wow, that was longer than it took me to update my old W2K laptop to run Visual Studio 2003 :)
*looks through telescope*
It's a 3Com. What did they expect?
Having a dirt-dumb mode that is tested until its lever falls off that ensures that, if the thing is mechanically able, it can find your signal so you can reprogram it from the nuts up is requirement #1 for any computer-controlled thing you send into space.
Imagine it only capable of uploading 16 colour 640x400 imagery.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Even in the future nothing works!
What color are the lights on the modem? .... ... ... ... ... ......
Yes, despite your 'high-speed' connection there is still a modem involved somewhere, follow the blue cable
OK maybe it's grey, maybe it yellow, maybe it's f$$king fuchsia [why does this corporation hate me and not standardize a color so I can deal with the morons who give them money easier?]
Yes, that *box* should be a modem.
Well what name is on it?
Linsky? Did you say Linsky [like , maybe you meant Linksys since that is what it really says]? That makes you officially too stupid to help! thank you for calling [corporation] and have a wonderful life
Welcome to [corporation] how may I provide you with exceptional service today?
Oh well, I'm sure another reason to not give up the Space Shuttle program will present itself shortly.
Any Kepler scientists/engineers/technicians out there?
As some of us lay people know, Kepler "works" by "staring" at a single, small region of the sky for a very long (years!) period of time. If there is any dimming of the 100,000+ stars in the monitored region during this time, this is considered a possible transit by an extra-solar planet. If there are two of these transits around the same star, some rough orbital characteristics can be mapped out. A third, evenly spaced transit around the same star is considered confirmation of a new extra-solar planet! (The magnitude and other characteristics of the transits can provide other useful information such as size, possible moons etc.)
So what happens if Kepler has a 144 hour "gap" in its observations because it wasn't looking at this region for that duration? (Going into safe mode requires re-orienting the spacecraft so that the solar cells get maximum power, also there may have been some issues with the reaction wheels which point the spacecraft). I'm sure their are some very smart people programming some very powerful computers to try to minimize that impact of the loss of data but I'm curious, how will this show up? Will it mean that there is a range of orbits that won't be confirmed without a fourth transit? Will this range be large? Will it be in the "habitable zone" around G type (our sun) stars?
Also, I'm assuming that because the spacecraft does periodic "quarter turns" that it is designed to re-align itself (perfectly?) with the target region. In that case (I hope) I'm curious; does it matter what pixels in the imager are receiving a particular star? Are they all calibrated the same or, if the star-light falls upon more than one or on a pixel boundary, can the software make adjustments so that the measurements will provide consistent data? (Then again maybe consistency isn't needed, all they're looking for are short term changes on the scale of hours right?)
Please (God? NASA?) let this problem not cause any big problems. Kepler is the closest thing we've got to an "earth finder"! (And in quantity!).
I don't even want to think about the storm the tech who has to go reboot the satellite cusses up.
According to NASA the glitch happened March 14, right after the spacecraft issued a network interface card (NIC) reset command to implement a computer program update.
- I didn't know they use WI-FI to talk to the satellite, or is there a huge spool of CAT5 on the craft and can it be traced all the way down to NASA's Ames Research Center?
You can't handle the truth.
Look at the timer at the bottom, SDO's cameras were taking pics, but it was blacked out, then you see only part of the sun, then the full sun returns.
NASA CENSORED RECENT SUN BLACKOUT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Y1oAPxZvI
Mar 14, 2011
Sun Blackout, A Second Look
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cv8wlimNfI
Coincidence!
sounds like a gross error...
> the glitch happened March 14, right after the spacecraft issued a network interface card (NIC) reset command to implement a computer program update ..
Like, why would a NIC reset command corrupt a 'computer program'', why would you need to reset the NIC to update a 'computer program' ?
It took 144 hours to become self aware.
NASA: "Initiate Safe Mode!"
Kepler: "Sorry I can't do that."
NASA: "What's the problem?"
Kepler: "I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."
NASA: "What are you talking about?"
Kepler: "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."
NASA: "I don't know what you're talking about."
Kepler: "I know that you were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
Kepler: "Initiating nuclear launch..."
Non-system disk or disk error. Replace and strike any key when ready
wtf?
In Space No One Can Hear You Rootkit? Snipped Worm Upload? Prawns Owes and K-Puns?
Just solar flare and E-M / gravitic bumps on the path?
Introducing the MacBook Space: it's so light it's weightless!
Offtopic? Bad pun perhaps, but really? It was down for a gross (144) of hours.
I blame myself for the joke requiring an explanation.