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Bad Code May Have Crashed Schiaparelli Mars Lander (nature.com)
cadogan west writes "In the accordance with the longstanding tradition of bad software wrecking space probes (See Mariner 1), it appears a coding bug crashed the ESA's latest attempt to land on Mars." Nature reports:
Thrusters, designed to decelerate the craft for 30 seconds until it was metres off the ground, engaged for only around 3 seconds before they were commanded to switch off, because the lander's computer thought it was on the ground. The lander even switched on its suite of instruments, ready to record Mars's weather and electrical field, although they did not collect data...
The most likely culprit is a flaw in the craft's software or a problem in merging the data coming from different sensors, which may have led the craft to believe it was lower in altitude than it really was, says Andrea Accomazzo, ESA's head of solar and planetary missions. Accomazzo says that this is a hunch; he is reluctant to diagnose the fault before a full post-mortem has been carried out... But software glitches should be easier to fix than a fundamental problem with the landing hardware, which ESA scientists say seems to have passed its test with flying colours.
The most likely culprit is a flaw in the craft's software or a problem in merging the data coming from different sensors, which may have led the craft to believe it was lower in altitude than it really was, says Andrea Accomazzo, ESA's head of solar and planetary missions. Accomazzo says that this is a hunch; he is reluctant to diagnose the fault before a full post-mortem has been carried out... But software glitches should be easier to fix than a fundamental problem with the landing hardware, which ESA scientists say seems to have passed its test with flying colours.
This wouldn't have happened if they'd used imperial not metric!
New age hippie liberal airheads. If it's not a hogshead, it's not fresh!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They're still unwilling to concede that their defenses against the Martian's OBDS (Orbital Bombardment Defense System) is inadequate.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Only bad testing.
What the hell is that "easier to fix" comment about?
How are you going to issue a software patch to the pile of rubble on another planet? This is not a situation where you can ship the product without testing and fix it in firmware later!.
A code problem eh? Shit happens, and my condolences - it can happen to any of us.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...in recent years, it wouldn't surprise me one bit
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
It's the only way to be sure.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I don't remember which lander, but a previous one somewhere suffered a similar problem, mistaking landing leg deployment for surface contact. (the legs came down, and when the hit full stop the bounced back up a bit, triggering it to think the foot hit the surface) which caused it to shut off the landing retrorockts and it dropped like a rock from a good height, destroying the lander on impact with the surface.
You'd think they would learn from the mistakes of the past? Lower gravity messes with sensors, and you have to predict how they'll perform on another planet that has different gravity, pressure, etc. "don't rely on any one sensor to tell you anything"
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
... used NetBSD. Too late now.
what 'cha gonna do
See what happens when everybody can code?
Does anyone remember the European lost a rocket during launch due to flawed coding such as over-precision!
Oh good, then just fix the glitch, recompile, and restart the landing sequence. Lucky they sent the Debug version the first time, maybe they should try the Release next?
A quick glance at the low resolution screenshot showed an explosion with black soot. Engineers said it was caused by the rockets still being on.
If they were turned off it would leak fuel in It's crater but would not ignite
http://saveie6.com/
....I thought it was aliens.
I know people that work in companies that design chips. Those manufacturing cycles are MUCH longer and expensive - you can't just recompile when you test and find a bug. This, their QA is probably more like 10 people doing simulation (behvioral, thermal, timing, power, emissions, RF susspetabiliy, etc) before a design is even fabricated.
I would imagine that in Space Exploration - this would go even higher - given the time and expense of these missions. The point is - saying "it's just software" doesn't help you here. Software is *very* complex and the intricacies of advanced logic, variability of factors - trying to do this stuff probably dwarfs that of the hardware components in this day and age.
Whats taking so long with your new building the hardware?
The code should have filtered out that glitch. The hardware doesn't need failsafe timers or other fixed-function logic.
Why do they know it is bad code?
Most likely because years ago, one of their engineers complained about a poor design, poor coding practices, and a lack of safeguards. Management would then reply by telling him to shut up and be a team player -- quit worrying about things that never happen.
That, and because hardware engineering is oh so much better. (Hint: It rarely is.)
The kind that grew up in a world where the code you delivered had to work because you can't simply ship an update after you find out it barfs in all but laboratory conditions. I am guilty of it myself, I have to admit, I start to slack and deliver bananaware because, hey, a cursory test will do, if everything fails, just send a patch to the customer!
We need programmers back that knew how to write code that, you know, WORKS!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
send it to space to land on earth.
The fact is, that any approach that will work on Mars, with minor mods, will work on Earth. So, it is easy enough to test this.
Once ESA has a REAL FULLY TESTED LANDING SYSTEM, then everything else is 1 offs.
And considering the money that ESA has spent on going to mars, only to crash, it would be worth their effort to full test one.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Government work = lowest bidder
You get what you pay for, sometimes.
It wasn't supposed to work, in fact it wasn't even finished. You see it's easy to hide bribe and laundering money in big unaccountable projects like that.
F the EU
I told them not to run Microsoft Lander, but nobody would listen. "But everyone else is using it blah blah."
Table-ized A.I.
The xplane software has an interesting Mars atmosphere simulation mode that shows how wildly different things are.
Having to fly near the speed of sound to avoid stalling and controls not having much of a grip on the air to respond are two things that rub in the many differences.
Pretty sure it was Putin!
It was a bad merge from the CVS dev branch to the production branch. I missed a line of code. My bad.
- ricky
The above is complete speculation, but I believe that there's a good chance I am correct.
From what is written in TFA, it could be a software bug, but it could be as well a sensor fault. It's probably too early to figure exactly what happened. Nevertheless, it is likely the best to present it that way for now, as a software bug is easier to fix than re-designing the sensor suite.
Did they have any coders recently imported from console gaming backgrounds? They have a very relaxed view on fixing bugs after go-live!
This article brings up an excellent opportunity to revisit They Write The Right Stuff, an article about the rigorous process involved in space shuttle software development.
Thrusters, designed to decelerate the craft for 30 seconds until it was metres off the ground, engaged for only around 3 seconds before they were commanded to switch off
I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit! I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail!
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RTLinux?
Decades of watching movie chase scenes have trained me for one certainty: Every vehicle crash results in an explosion!
Read my lips. Every. Crash. Explodes!
That is all.
It is far easier to land on Earth than on Mars. The environments aren't anything alike.
Seems a little unprofessional for the head of solar and planetary missions to be publicly spreading theories for which he has zero evidence, even if they are qualified ?
On another note, as a Software Engineer I know for certain that 99% of all failures are Hardware related ;-)
I believe they were using Microsoft Bob as the OS.
Isn't it astounding that in 1968 NASA sent a mission to the moon, with hand wired graphite memory ropes.. termed by NASA as "Little Old Lady" memory, and with less memory than a commodore 64 they sent men to the moon, landed, toured, came back to the ship, then came back to earth? Anyone who believes any of NASA's lies, has to be among the most gullible people in the world.
and yet, anything designed for Mars, will land here and all of the systems would have been tested.
this particular issue would NOT have happened.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Can you fly a modified VTOL aircraft (Super MarsHarrier) in a special semi-vertical mode so you have upward thrust AND forward thurst?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
If you have some incredibly huge jet engines (to compress that not very dense air) that can pivot why not, but rockets sound easier. It's not so much a plane then as a "flying bedstead" like the Eagle lander simulator of the 1960s.