Software Error Likely Killed MGS Spacecraft 199
Aglassis writes "NASA investigators have determined that a software update performed in June of 2006 may have doomed the 10-year-old spacecraft. Apparently the software error caused the solar arrays to drive against a mechanical stop which then forced the spacecraft into safe mode. Unfortunately, after that the spacecraft's radiator was pointed at the sun which overheated the battery and destroyed it. Contact was lost with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in November 2006. NASA will form an internal review board to determine formally the cause of the loss of the spacecraft and what remedial actions are needed for future missions."
YACCS -Yet Another Computer Corkup in Space (Score:5, Informative)
Aero and space are very unforgiving of human coding errors.
Re:What is Microsoft wrote it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:YACCS -Yet Another Computer Corkup in Space (Score:5, Informative)
http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=163293&ty
Nope. (Score:2, Informative)
A single, half-roll to inverted in the Falcon wouldn't have exerted enough Gs on the pilot to do anything worse than to exclaim WTF!, and disengage the a/p. A roll in and of itself in an aircraft doesn't really induce much Gs.... a "bank-and-yank" turn does, and that's what the F16 can do at higher Gs than the pilot can take... not the roll.
Re:Better than a metric-English conversion error (Score:5, Informative)
The details are really convoluted, but the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] on the mission has a decent write up explaining how the mistake was made, with additional resources cited. The PDF paper giving a perspective from the MCO team is particularly revealing, if you've got some time on your hands.
Re:YACCS -Yet Another Computer Corkup in Space (Score:3, Informative)
Well your whole post is called into question due to quite a few questionable items: