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Software Error Caused Soyuz/Galileo Failure
schwit1 writes An investigation into the recent failed Soyuz launch of the EU's Galileo satellites has found that the Russian Fregat upper stage fired correctly, but its software was programmed for the wrong orbit. From the article: "The failure of the European Union’s Galileo satellites to reach their intended orbital position was likely caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket’s upper-stage, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday. 'The nonstandard operation of the integrated management system was likely caused by an error in the embedded software. As a result, the upper stage received an incorrect flight assignment, and, operating in full accordance with the embedded software, it has delivered the units to the wrong destination,' an unnamed source from Russian space Agency Roscosmos was quoted as saying by the newspaper."
A software error in Russian GLONASS receivers has resulted in thousands of Russian troops innocently crossing the border into Ukraine.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's not like it's rocket science to get it right
Table-ized A.I.
This is not a SW error! The software put them right where they were told to. The orbital parameters were wrong! This is a data error not a SW error!
There's almost no overlap between the skills & techniques necessary to write & verify critical software (e.g. when lives or huge amounts of money are on the line) vs. what is considered to be "programming". Modern software engineering's approach to reliable system design is about where hardware engineering was fifty years ago, and about where civil engineering was 100 years ago.
SQA is a joke. Reliable systems are made using way more robust techniques, including: (a) a severely restricted state space, (b) redundancy, (c) formal proofs, (d) fully (and formally) specified interfaces, (e) random simulation, (f) several different types of coverage, (g) physics-based analysis, etc.
The failure of the software community to understand this distinction is why I'm scared to death about the coming world of driver-less cars and robots performing surgery. How many people are going to be killed by C++ in the next decade?