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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.
Except hardware requires actual manufacturing and all that goes along with THAT.
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.
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!.
I've been doing a lot of reading about the early space programs of the US and the Soviet Union, and that context the meaning is clear: you can use the same approach in the next Mars landing attempt; you don't have to redesign an entirely new system.
"Rocket science" is hard, because you not only have to be smart, you have to be able to stand repeated failure. Normal people when faced with a spectacular fiasco give up, or they wipe the slate clean and start over. But in something as complicated as a mission like this you have to look at it this way: from a vehicular standpoint everything worked like a charm right up until the last three minutes or so of the trip.
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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!.
It's Agile. The product owner will raise this issue as a priority in the backlog, they'll fix it in this sprint, and it will ship in the next release.
John
what 'cha gonna do
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 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.
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.
Easier to fix - in that, "we don't have to spend 10 years redesigning the entire fucking lander, we just need to fix the fucking software and send a new fucking copy of the same hardware in six fucking months."
Jesus fucking christ, are you really that fucking Asperger's?
I don't see much evidence that the OP has Asperger's, but you may want to get checked out about your possible case of Tourette syndrome.
As a manufacturing engineer I can tell you from experience even in tightly regulated industries the instances of the print not matching the part is more common than you would think, even on parts produced for decades. When you are talking about one-offs that just self-destructed on another planet and cannot compare the as-produced part to the print it becomes exceedingly difficult to account for last-minute design changes.
I told them not to run Microsoft Lander, but nobody would listen. "But everyone else is using it blah blah."
Table-ized A.I.
That one indeed. I remember years ago in the manufacturing facility where my father worked a machinist retired and suddenly the quality of a certain part went down to unusable. What they found out that the part was rotaionally casted and the original machinist didn't read the actual casting instruction that came with the blueprints. He was an experienced machinist and knew what part he had to deliver and he always delivered it just right. The ones that the guy who came after him produced were brittle and not well formed. It turned out that the old guy regulated the rpm by feeling of material splatter and vibration, and on average he spun the mold about 3 times more than prescribed. The engineer who did the blueprint newer knew.
You can't if the people who did it before and were helping since 2009 pull out in 2012, take their bat and ball and go home.
NASA pulled out due to budget cuts and IP restrictions meant the ESA couldn't use their stuff after they pulled out.
So in this case politics was the enemy of your common sense idea.
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.
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 is common everywhere: how to capture specific domain knowledge? And remember, it's a two-way process. The knowledge of the current expert has to be recorded in some way, and then, the new guy has to be trained to the intricacies of the previous procedure.Mix in the observation that some players may not want this process to be successful, and you're probably boned before you even realise it.
You can do it with something called a Version Control System, which is actually quite easy to set up. Granted a lot of engineers find it tedious to have to commit their designs but you know, whatever.
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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This is common everywhere: how to capture specific domain knowledge? And remember, it's a two-way process. The knowledge of the current expert has to be recorded in some way, and then, the new guy has to be trained to the intricacies of the previous procedure. ...
The place that records the previous expert's knowledge is called "Source Code". Destroy that and you will start as an ignorant beginner. 8-)
Don't believe what "everyone says". ;-)
So not just the ESA, but you want to concede defeat in Korea and watch Seoul burn?
I think you are a little messed up.
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 ;-)
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.