[HN Gopher] NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues... ___________________________________________________________________ NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope Author : fortran77 Score : 282 points Date : 2021-06-24 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | prog17analyst1 wrote: | I know people say this a lot, but in this case I really think a | (at least partial) rewrite in Rust of the Hubble software would | be very beneficial. We could gather some of the most | distinguished coders here in hacker-news and create a task force | to show them the benefits of rust's memory safety. | jandrese wrote: | I'm pretty sure Hubble didn't crash due to a memory overflow. | It is almost certainly a hardware failure somewhere, and Rust's | memory safety won't help you if a failed bus or flaky memory | chip is corrupting your data. | nashashmi wrote: | > Most of Hubble's components have redundant back-ups, so once | scientists figure out the specific component that's causing the | computer problem, they can remotely switch over to its back-up | part. | | Of course they do! I wonder if they ever had to put another part | out of service. I also wonder whether the twin of the part could | also suffer the same failure at the same time without being used. | mikeytown2 wrote: | Gyroscopes are in short supply on Hubble currently | wongarsu wrote: | And that despite regular servicing back when we still had the | Space Shuttle. | | Hubble started out with 6 gyroscopes, in 1996 they replaced | four of them, by 1999 four had failed so they replaced all | six, by 2009 three had failed again, so they replaced all | six. Now they are again down to three, and one of the | remaining ones has a defect that required some workarounds. | The last three gyros are at least a new design that should | last a bit longer. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | It sounds like a specific failure of gyros, what | characteristic causes that failure? Are they more | susceptible to cosmic rays or something? Do you know how | they've mitigated that failure? | dangrossman wrote: | This webpage describes Hubble's gyros and the reason some | of the earlier ones failed: | https://esahubble.org/about/general/gyroscopes/ | Koshkin wrote: | They should have moved to the cloud. /ducks | tomrod wrote: | This is a truly stellar wit. | | But in all honesty, how would an internet across the solar | system work? | hughrr wrote: | UUCP via tightbeam. | throw_away wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet | dekhn wrote: | store and forward | selimnairb wrote: | UUCP | dekhn wrote: | I wasn't joking: https://www.quantamagazine.org/vint- | cerfs-plan-for-building-... | IgorPartola wrote: | I'd it can work over carrier pigeon [1], it can work over | long distance radio. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _how would an internet across the solar system work?_ | | Realistically, each ~150 ms sphere would have its own cloud | infrastructure. Those systems would then bridge with one | another. So idk AWS on Earth and DogeNet on Mars. | | I would love for a distributed model as much as the next guy, | but it's unlikely to happen for the same reasons that it | isn't happening today. | bluGill wrote: | More than 150ms. There are currently satellite internet | services that you can get that use geosynchronous orbits | outside of that 150ms zone. | | The idea is sound, but the zone needs to be a bit bigger in | reality. I think the moon is close enough to earth to be in | the same zone (assuming antennas on "both sides", and | special routing protocols to deal with day/night cycles) | tomrod wrote: | But if each node communicated within its 150ms sphere, and | you place nodes 10ms (3,000 km?), could this serve as a | mesh network? | skylanh wrote: | I think you have an interesting idea, but might not be | thinking of the physics involved. | | > The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about | 54.6 million kilometers. The farthest apart they can be | is about 401 million km. The average distance is about | 225 million km. | | Loosely, the speed of light is ~300,000km/s. So 182s, | 1333s, and 750s as an absolute minimum length of time | from end to end. | | So, there are varying orbits, that's one problem. The | other problem is getting items into solar orbits. | | I didn't think of this, but now you have an even bigger | problem of trying to keep those items in some sort of | array that is in a direct line between Earth<->Mars. | | If we hand-wave away that problem, the next problem is | that each hop is adding latency, so, the direct answer | is: no, it makes things slower, and it's a significantly | harder problem than just communicating across that | distance. | tomrod wrote: | Array? Nah, just a very dense distribution :) | | But I appreciate the thought you put into this. Thank | you! | falcolas wrote: | Slowly. | | There's open efforts to work on a protocol that would work | with the extreme latency and packet loss. They're really | quite fascinating. | zahrc wrote: | Can't wait to have gigabit speed on the moon while my home | broadband still dies when I open a Netflix stream | detaro wrote: | Comms to rovers etc use store-and-forward protocols with pre- | planning of when which node will be able to see which other | node. (E.g. it's calculated when which dish on earth can send | a signal that will be seen by a probe around e.g. Mars, and | then when the probe can downlink to a rover on the surface, | and when the replies can be transmitted) | | Look into "Delay-tolerant networking" for more details. | dylan604 wrote: | Nah, they went for heavenly computing instead | IgorPartola wrote: | AWS Lens: giant satellite telescope control as a service! | BlewisJS wrote: | This kinda already exists: https://aws.amazon.com/ground- | station/ | marcus_holmes wrote: | Is this becoming the tech equivalent of "not The Onion"? | Pick an implausible service and guess if it's actually | available on AWS... | [deleted] | ianbooker wrote: | They did: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_... | prox wrote: | Didn't they also get a few older (Hubble type) spy satellites | to use? I remember a story about that. | atommclain wrote: | My hazy memory is that the NRO offered NASA a few satellite | bodies that they could populate with optic systems. Since | they were originally designed for monitoring earth they | aren't well suited for capturing data at much longer | distances. If I recall correctly I think someone explained | that it's like trying to peer through a straw, it works, | but ideally you'd want a much wider field of view. And | apparently the James Web telescope handles this much | better. | privong wrote: | The NRO satellites actually have an optical design with a | larger field of view than Hubble does. One of the NRO | spacecraft busses is being use for the WFIRST / Nancy | Grace Roman space telescope because of the wider field of | view. | atommclain wrote: | Good info, thanks for the corrections! | Y_Y wrote: | They're launching one, the other is waiting for a use- | case. | chias wrote: | I can't figure out what's causing computer issues _on my desk._ I | 'm not even in space. | ruined wrote: | have you tried turning it off and then on again | chias wrote: | Yup! Nevertheless, it remains a macbook ;) | mcc1ane wrote: | everything's in space | sharkweek wrote: | "It's all in your head, but so is everything." | slver wrote: | Technically the universe is projected into our brain and we | only perceive that projection. The problem is that it's a | very shitty projection. | Koshkin wrote: | Good enough not to miss the bowl. | snowwrestler wrote: | "Everything in space is trying to kill you. And everything is | in space." | ssully wrote: | Responding to this comment while debugging a CI/CD pipeline | failure for the last hour. I'll toast to the NASA engineers | with my cup of coffee. | testingcodehere wrote: | Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? | ortusdux wrote: | Time to bust out the tinkertoys! | | https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/hubble-memorable-moment... | desktopninja wrote: | I wonder if NASA would welcome a live worldwide collaboration to | try solve this problem. | lamontcg wrote: | The probably 5 people in the world who are domain experts in | the Hubble's control system don't really need a hundred | backseat drivers, that won't help any. | | And as someone who has been invited into "war rooms" by | managers who do the "you're smart so of course you can help | these other smart people stuck on a hard problem" there's a | real skill to being able to read the room and know when to back | the fuck out of it or just shut the fuck up -- which most | intellectuals don't have. Sit and listen for awhile and take it | in. Then maybe take your best idea and ask a very toned down | question. If the person who seems to be leading the | troubleshooting instructs you on why that's wrong, throws in 3 | neighboring ideas that also don't work, with 5 reasons you | haven't considered for why that's the entirely wrong path, then | just nod in agreement and be quiet and see what you can learn | from the domain experts. | | Peppering that team with a dozen outside "experts" is going to | be useless because they'll just start getting really defensive | after awhile, and even if someone winds up throwing out the | right solution they'll probably reflexively reject it. | | OTOH if that team ASKS for someone who has expertise the team | lacks and needs, then go assemble a team skilled at the use of | cellphones and the internet to hunt that person down and drag | them into the conversation. | bluGill wrote: | Give me 5-10 years at NASA working on Hubble and I can be a | domain expert useful in the room. Until then I'm a C++ expert | who needs to keep his mouth shut unless asked a difficult C++ | question (I wouldn't be surprised if Hubble is written in Ada | and they can't possibly have a difficult C++ question). | desktopninja wrote: | I doubt we (humans) can be respectful enough to each other in | truly a global event where an individual partakes in the war | room. What I'm thinking here is, and I admit a rather | simplistic view ... here is the problem; here is how to | observe/debug, submit what you think would be the solution. | This would be reviewed/vetted. | | Most likely school/college/university teams knowledgeable in | the subject matter would be the "individuals". | [deleted] | beprogrammed wrote: | Too many cooks in the kitchen. | | Despite the article trying to phrase it as if they have no idea | what to do, they know there computer incredibly well, it's a | matter of going through the steps and isolating the problem. | desktopninja wrote: | RE: Too many cooks in the kitchen. Very right. But sometimes | I think humans can behave well. | spamizbad wrote: | Might be a hardware issue. Tin whiskers? Electromigration? | qzw wrote: | _pushes up glasses_ I would watch the heck out of a Twitch stream | of their debugging /brainstorming sessions. I always loved the | movie _Apollo 13_ , especially the technical troubleshooting | parts. | macksd wrote: | Honestly that movie is a lot of why I got into math and | engineering. | | Jim Lovell was undeniably a badass but I watched that movie and | thought the heroes were the ones reading telemetry off a | computer screen and using their slide rule to figure out what | to do. I hope Hidden Figures does that for another generation. | nonameiguess wrote: | Not was. _Is_! | | I noticed on the last season of the Expanse that Luna | headquarters was named after him and bothered to look him up. | Dude's 93 and still kicking! | | It's amazing how well the astronaut medical screening worked. | Unless they get killed in the line of duty, these guys are | all living incredibly long. | seanc wrote: | Like John Aaron, the steely eyed missile man! | geoduck14 wrote: | Me, earlier this week: | | Did that work... no. Well, what about... THIS... still no. 3 | hours later... clear the cache?!? Aww crap | dehrmann wrote: | I have no idea if it would be more or less exciting than a tech | company warroom. | falcrist wrote: | It's worth noting that the people in that movie were WAY more | loud and emotional than the real NASA engineers and operators. | | You can see how NASA people react to tough situations by | watching the videos of mission control during the Challenger | and Columbia disasters. No shouting. No arguments. Just cool | professionalism and restrained emotions. | | They have a job to do, and they do it well even under stress. | "Steely-eyed missile men/women" indeed. | bumby wrote: | > _the people in that movie were WAY more loud and emotional | than the real NASA engineers and operators._ | | There are plenty of NASA engineers and leaders who lose their | cool. I'm only saying that so people don't overly lionize | them in a way that prevents them from pursuing a similar job | because they feel they are somehow cut from a different | cloth. | erosenbe0 wrote: | Everybody knows that when presented with the irrefutable | evidence that the Challenger o-rings would fail, they more | or less just let the astronauts die. Definitely cut from | same cloth as any other org. | bumby wrote: | That's not quite accurate. It wasn't that there was | "irrefutable" evidence that the o-rings would fail, it | was there wasn't data that they would, or wouldn't, fail. | | "The O-rings were never tested in extreme cold."[1] | | There wasn't data which led to discussions about | uncertainty, but that shouldn't be conflated with | irrefutable evidence of failure. | | The obviousness of it (like many engineering failures) | was only apparent in hindsight. | | "Evidence, in retrospect, points to a long period of | time, especially based on post-flight inspections when | the joint design weakness was 'sending a message' and the | true potential of this message was not perceived and | reacted to."[2] | | "Not perceived" isn't compatible with "irrefutable | evidence that it would fail". | | [1] https://www.space.com/31732-space-shuttle-challenger- | disaste... | | [2]https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO- | CRPT-99hrpt1016/pdf/... | kabdib wrote: | Henry S F Cooper Jr.'s book _The Evening Star_ describes some | of the remote debugging and other problem solving that was | necessary when the Magellan probe experienced computer problems | while orbiting Venus. It 's been a few decades since I read it, | but it was pretty detailed and rather exciting. | kevmo wrote: | This sort of comment is why I still read HN. | barkingcat wrote: | And the people downvoting this comment is why I will stop | reading HN. | [deleted] | NeutronStar wrote: | What did that comment actually bring to the conversation? | eitland wrote: | It encourages others to post more these comments. | | Since comment scores was removed this is the only way to | signal this to others besides the original commenter. | | That said it should not be overused. If it annoys someone | I guess they should downvote it but I don't think there | is a need to reflexively downvote every time someone adds | a friendly meta comment. | | (And if people start gaming it for karma farming I guess | it should be downvoted relentlessly until that stops :-) | RHSeeger wrote: | It didn't necessarily bring anything to this one | conversation. It did, however, communicate that "this is | the type of information that that person finds valuable | on Hacker News". And knowing what other people in your | social group like to hear/discuss is an important part of | keeping that group vibrant and wonderful. | | So no, it's probably not as useful as the comment it was | referring too, but it was useful (to some of us) as it | pertains to the community as a whole. | gentleman11 wrote: | Occasionally, very occasionally, it's nice to read | somebody just expressing enthusiasm instead of just | posting a clever counter argument. It's like a spice that | you only want a little of but that's still nice | jorvi wrote: | Eh, I can understand both sides of the fence. 'this is | why I read HN' is nothing but a slightly more verbal | '+1', but as you stated it does humanize HN and makes it | feel more social. | | In terms of downvotes, what really irks me and what I | often see is people posting factually correct | information, but still being sent into faded oblivion | because some sect of the community's worldview doesn't | agree with the facts. | ben0x539 wrote: | I don't understand this viewpoint. Information being | factually correct is a low bar. I have a lot of factually | correct information that is irrelevant or misleading, or | that I could state in a way that drags down the level of | discourse more than it illuminates truth. Factually | correct information is usually involved in tu quoque | fallacies, or used to goad people into drawing false, | non-sequitur conclusions. The Hacker News guidelines lay | out a list of expectations for comments that go beyond | factual correctness. | | If someone uses factually correct information to make a | comment thread worse, I can see how downvotes could be | justified. | Teever wrote: | "this" | r_police wrote: | I mean, you could watch the same news on r/news if you | want to see that kind of comments. We don't do that here, | and tourists always try to emulate their customes but it | is still wrong. | | Just commenting as a person with many years on this | platform. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Does that spice go bad if it turns gray? | kbelder wrote: | Conversation. | pc86 wrote: | It's arguably even worse than just commenting "This." At | least that is small enough you can scan over it and | barely even register its existence. But this fedora- | tipping "Thank you kind sir this is the type of Internet | Content I enjoy!" doesn't even afford you that luxury. | omikun wrote: | How could it have been reworded to avoid the "fedora- | tipping" connotation? | | I'm being sincere here since I also appreciate book | recommendations and I get probably half my book | recommendations from HN. | Freestyler_3 wrote: | I think the point is to instead of using the keyboard, | use the mouse to click the up arrow, and leave it at | that. (I know how tempting it is to reply quickly to | something, I have the urge to just post whats going on my | mind right away unfiltered. So I am very forgiving, but | not everyone is) | pbhjpbhj wrote: | That only tells the person who owns the comment that you | appreciate it, with comment scores you're correct that | almost all "I like this" comments are wrong, without | comment scores then they become useful again. | amalcon wrote: | Worth considering that comment scores were hidden for a | reason. Exposing that information to everyone, as opposed | to just the comment author, does not necessarily improve | the discussion. | bee_rider wrote: | This sort of comment is why I still read HN! | jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: | I really dislike the downvote function because it | reinforces self-censoring. And I completely loathe the | implementation of it, you need xxxx upvotes to downvote | posts....I have no words. | | Well, in opposing it I especially read the faded comments | and upvote any of those that are not completely | abhorrent. | | Take that, ycombinator. | beerandt wrote: | >I especially read the faded comments and upvote | | This seems to happen a lot more frequently here than | anywhere else. | | I'm not really sure what that says, other than people | still read comments that are faded. Also that people | shouldn't worry about self-censoring. | | I don't have a problem with downvotes or the karma needed | to do it, but | | I do sometimes wish it were possible to reply to a dead | comment, especially if you vouch for it and it's still | dead. | | Sometimes they're worth defending, or is relevant in a | non-obvious way, and sometimes the comment itself is | discussion worthy, as it relates to the topic, even if | it's wrong or seems trollish. | ArcticCelt wrote: | This youtube series of video, follow a group that restored an | Apollo Guidance Computer that a collector basically pulled from | the trash. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU&list=PL-_93BVApb... | | My favorite part is when they needed the version of the | software that was used for the moon landing but they only had | the source code for a previous version (scanned from giant | binder) and the hash value of the version of the landing. By a | series of educated guesses, by reading memos and by analysis of | the source code they modified the old code the exact way so it | gave them the correct hash, confirming that they correctly and | exactly recreated the original code. | | It's being a while and I go from memory, I might have some | details wrong. See this video for this story. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JTa1RQxU04 | Koshkin wrote: | Debugging on a computer that is down is not a very exciting | process. | mkarr wrote: | _pg down_ | | Sigh. | | _pg down_ | | Sigh | | ... | | Repeat for hours. | qzw wrote: | In the movie _Hero_ [0], two kung fu masters fight a battle | purely in their minds. And when the mental fight was over, | they only execute one physical move to finish the battle. | | Think of this as the computer equivalent of that scene. | | [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 | ISL wrote: | What a wonderful visual representation of the notion that, | "a battle is won before it begins." | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Which is a Tsun-tzu reference presumably, he says don't | enter a battle unless you have 'already' won (through | preparation, numerical supremacy, etc.). | avaldes wrote: | Like the battle between Sherlock and Moriarty in Sherlock | Holmes: A Game of Shadows? | the_af wrote: | Yes. A lot of Western action movies owe their inspiration | to Chinese movies (and I suppose, viceversa). In this | case Hero (2002) -- or a similar movie, since I doubt it | invented this trope -- is likely an inspiration for A | Game of Shadows (2011). | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | HK movies clearly inspired the action movies of the 90s. | barbazoo wrote: | Both: Dance around for 10 minutes trying to out-physics | each other | | Guy 1: Why don't I just poke him with the pointy bit | | Great scene though, makes me want to watch the whole movie. | qzw wrote: | Yeah, this is strictly artistic kung fu, which is | basically high-mortality ballet. There are also many | "realistic" martial arts films, if that's your thing. I | enjoy both styles, depending on mood. | the_af wrote: | Agreed. Wuxia to be specific, which is kinda like fantasy | kung fu and has a long tradition. | | It includes powers like becoming weightless, killing with | a single movement, flying, etc. | NetOpWibby wrote: | This sounds amazing! | bshep wrote: | In case anyone wants to watch a clip of the fight: | | https://youtu.be/AeeoEpmyb2Y | fishtoaster wrote: | _Hero_'s always been one of my favorites. A lot of kung | fu movies try to strike a balance between aesthetics and | realism - I really enjoy a movie that picks one (in this | case the former) and goes all in on it. It's got a fight | that takes place entirely on the surface of a lake, and | another that takes places in a forest of falling leaves | that change color several times throughout the scene. | It's an incredibly beautiful movie. | gautamcgoel wrote: | Ugh, such a good movie... If you haven't seen it, do | yourself a favor and go see it. | meepmorp wrote: | No, but "Debugging on a computer that is down... in space," | does sound more interesting, right? | | You have a computer that you can only interact with over a | radio link, and need to make it start working again with only | what you know about how the system is built and a limited set | of remote commands. Sounds like something I'd get obsessed | with solving. | amelius wrote: | There is a game in here, somewhere, somehow. | zomglings wrote: | Paging Zachtronics (https://www.zachtronics.com/). | only_as_i_fall wrote: | I'll settle for the post-mortem | pbourke wrote: | Speak for yourself | zepearl wrote: | I did something like that when trying to boot my brand new | root server in Finland a few weeks ago (tried ~50 times while | having UEFI enabled plus mdadm raid1 on GPT partitions, never | worked, asked support to disable UEFI, worked). | | Confirming that not being able to ping/connect to it during | the failed attempts was absolutely not exciting :) | smileysteve wrote: | especially with extremely long response times. | afterburner wrote: | I think what you're really saying is you'd watch the movie | version of this. | | And considering there are no life or death stakes, it still | wouldn't be as exciting as Apollo 13. | hungryforcodes wrote: | That might not be true though. | | This guy took about 30 hours of video of him porting an 80s | version of unix to the ESP8266. Warts and all -- live! | | I've started to watch it and it's fascinating! | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDHcGY7EzUM&t=62s | | You could have a whole channel with different teams debugging | satellite technology and if you're bored, it would probably | be quite interesting. The bigger problem is most likely | concerns about IP and secret protocols and so on. | | "And now Bob will log into TeleSat123 via SSH." <We see bob | type in root / password123> | | "Oups, uh..gosh we'll just go to a commercial break!" | stackbutterflow wrote: | I guess the last thing you want when you're debugging | something during your work is for the whole word to watch | over your shoulder. | keanebean86 wrote: | This would be cool for earth satellites. | | On the other hand watching a stream involving something on | Mars, let alone voyager, would be pretty boring! | | Send: ls | | Ok let's take a 20 minute break. | sfink wrote: | I've worked on something like this, just a lot more mundane. | We had Linux PCs strapped to the ceiling of various | locations, mostly malls, together with a camera and projector | to produce an interactive display on the floor. I had a | couple of times where somebody would be onsite and the | projector would be off or the display would be mangled. And | it takes quite a while to get a lift to get up to the box (if | it would even be allowed at that time of day), there was no | network at that time, and all they had was a wireless IR | keyboard that occasionally dropped keypresses. | | Imagine dictating shell commands, over the phone, to a | salesperson who has no idea what half the characters are that | you're asking him to type, and the only output signal I could | come up with was ejecting the CD tray, which was just visible | from the ground... | | (Note that the goal wasn't usually to fix things on the spot, | it was more to triage things like whether we needed to have a | replacement projector on hand, which was a big deal.) | abnry wrote: | Job Posting: NASA programmer, needs at least 1 wpm typing | speed and experience with compiling large projects. | gundul wrote: | Best programmer. -1 wpm. | Koshkin wrote: | Only needs a keyboard with one key. | mywittyname wrote: | I'm so fast that I can do -127wpm. Only in certain | software though. | mkr-hn wrote: | Time to bring back flowchart templates. | diamondo25 wrote: | The amount of preparation is much, much more than every | other "accessible" installation. Typos are the worst to | recover from, backspace usually doesnt exist. As I've sent | commands to our Linux-running satellites, its usually | prepending your commands with ctrl-c characters and a | couple newlines at the end, just to make sure it runs and | nothing is left in the buffer. There is also a possibility | that commands get executed multiple times, and there are | usually limits in transmission speed, processing speed, and | frame length. Sending a lot of characters over a terminal | can cause characters to be eaten, creating typos you can't | see, affecting the commanding immensely. | 3pt14159 wrote: | I'm surprised theres no error correction in your uplink. | Crazy. | diamondo25 wrote: | It depends on the API. If your API is "put this data over | uart to the TTY", and the uart of the device is | overloaded and drops characters... Or maybe mangles | characters due to bitflips. Or what have you. Its all | possible! | bentcorner wrote: | Isn't there some way to ensure that what you typed is | what is being executed? Dropping characters from the | terminal sounds terrifying. | | I don't know enough about ssh and terminals to know if | it's possible to type "12345" and see "12345" echoed back | to me but really what the remote session sees is "1245". | diamondo25 wrote: | Yes, terminals usually echo back the characters. In our | case this would be buffered and we could request the | buffer. But that would still take some operations. Best | way, usually, is to send a bunch of commands in a way you | ensure proper order of execution (eg write a file, check | checksum of file, execute file), and make sure you can | pull the logs afterwards. | | Nowadays, links and systems get easier to work with, and | you can sometimes have a literal TTY open to the system, | like Reactor Hello World has ( | https://reaktorspace.com/reaktor-hello-world/ ). However, | this is over S-band, which is a 2Mbit/s link, so overhead | for a stable TTY (or ethernet connection) is a lot less | than using UHF/VHF. | abnry wrote: | Very fascinating! You haven't happened to written a blog | post or something on this, have you? I am sure HN would | love reading about it. | diamondo25 wrote: | Sorry, I did not. There are plenty of stories on the | internet about cubesats, they get launched by | universities even :) | diamondo25 wrote: | From my work experience its like this: 1. Assemble commands | to run 2. Run the commands and see results in the 15 minute | window 3. See if you can do more commanding in the minutes | you have left 4. Make a new plan, wait for next pass, and | goto 1 | | For LEO satellites, that usually means you have 2 blocks of 3 | 13 minute passes, when the groundstation is in The | Netherlands. For a Svalbard groundstation, you get a lot | more, but still 13 minute or less passess. | throwawayboise wrote: | If you ever worked on a busy mainframe your compile jobs | could easily be queued for 20-30 minutes. Made you much more | careful to check for typos and do test runs of the code "in | your head" before submitting. | idreyn wrote: | In case you haven't seen it: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/ | 1911z wrote: | Thank you for sharing, this is amazing | belter wrote: | Fantastic site. Thanks for sharing. | Izkata wrote: | Fun weirdness of even limited multilingualness: For some | reason my brain first parsed this as "a _pollo_ in real time | " - or, from Spanish, "a chicken in real time". | eschneider wrote: | I dunno. That sort of thing is exactly my job, except the | remote devices are still on earth somewheres. What you'd see is | me sitting in a library drinking coffee and looking at source | code and schematics until I had an answer that matched the | evidence. | | Satisfying, but not exactly must watch tv. | moocowtruck wrote: | you just killed any future dramatic space troubleshooting | film scenes for me | Izkata wrote: | > Satisfying, but not exactly must watch tv. | | What's in your head could be though. That's my pet theory on | the movie _Hackers_ , what we're seeing on the computer | screens isn't what's actually there, it's the characters' | mental constructs visualized. | trothamel wrote: | If you want to see debugging a computer in space, check out | Apollo 13's sequel, Apollo 14. The moon landing is being held | up by shorted-out switch that's causing the LM to abort the | landing, and it's up to the programmers back home to figure out | how to work around it in time to allow the landing. | | Apollo 13 was the story of a 'successful failure', while Apollo | 14 shows how hard work and creative thinking can turn failure | into success. | cameldrv wrote: | Don Eyles' book Sunburst and Luminary has a chapter on this, | and Don was primarily responsible for the Apollo 14 | workaround. The book is also generally just a fantastic | account of what it was like to develop software for the | Apollo Guidance Computer. | trothamel wrote: | Also about living through the sexual revolution. It's a | really interesting book, but as much of a memoir as a | technical book. | bumby wrote: | Was this the scenario where there was a false positive | warning light but they had no way to test if it was truly a | false alarm? I remember attending a talk by an Apollo | engineer who convinced the control room that the switch | design had a propensity to a short and it really came down to | a probability-based judgement call | NikolaNovak wrote: | Is there actually an Apollo 14 movie? I can find Apollo 18 | but not a Apollo 14 feature movie. | | I saw this but it's a short documentary and may not be what | you meant: https://www.amazon.com/Apollo-14-Complete- | Downlink-Edition/d... | trothamel wrote: | No, or at least not that I know of. I was having a bit of | fun by declaring Apollo 14 (the mission) the sequel to | Apollo 13 (the mission). | cratermoon wrote: | There's the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon", which | covers this with the Apollo 14 mission. Highly recommended. | [deleted] | NikolaNovak wrote: | Ahh, yes; I've seen the series multiple times - agreed | that it's great, especially for those who enjoyed Apollo | 13. I wasn't sure if there was a different Apollo-14 | movie OP/Trothamel was referring to... | geocrasher wrote: | Scott Manley to the rescue: "The Computer Hack That Saved | Apollo 14" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSSmNUl9Snw | caycep wrote: | Someone is going to suggest unplugging it and plugging it in | again, i'm sure | mehphp wrote: | See, remote work doesn't work! | belter wrote: | They have two computers: | | - First they had a DF-224 flight computer and a - Science | Instrument Control and Data Handling (SI C&DH) | | Initially DF-224 between missions got installed a coprocessor: | https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/hubble/a_pdf/news/facts/Co... | | During another servicing mission they replaced it with something | called the Advanced Computer with Intel 80486: | https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/hubble/a_pdf/news/facts/FS... | | It looks like its about 50,000 lines of code in the C and | Assembly programming languages. | | https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/327688main_09_SM4_Media_Guide_rev1.... | | Fig 5-10 is the Data Management Subsystem | | https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/archive/sm3a/downloads/sm3a_media_... | belter wrote: | There is also a Help Desk but its probably busy right now... | | "Welcome to the Hubble Space Telescope Help Desk" | | https://stsci.service-now.com/hst?id=hst_index | mikeytown2 wrote: | The cause of the failure is most likely tin whiskers [1] or | radiation. | | [1] https://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm. | ComputerGuru wrote: | I thought NASA no longer used lead-free solder to avoid this. | kube-system wrote: | I think a lot of safety-critical systems even here on earth | have exemptions from lead-free regulations because of this... | but even lead can form whiskers. | bumby wrote: | Is there evidence of either yet? I'm not sure how you get from | "potential" failure mode to "most likely" | mikeytown2 wrote: | They're trying to find the broken component; what caused the | issue is usually a handful of things in space. Those are | usually the top causes of component failure in that | environment. | bumby wrote: | Although a relatively small part of my career, I spent some | time working within the quality arm of an aerospace org. A | lot more on propulsion systems, but both those and | satellites are usually required to meet J-STD specs for | electronic builds. After a few failure investigations, you | become acutely aware of the dangers of prematurely jumping | to conclusions. | NelsonMinar wrote: | So no evidence then. | IAmMaulik wrote: | >"They're very primitive computers compared to what's in your | cell phone," | | I do not understand why they can't just swap out the computer for | a better and more modern one. Am I missing something here? | McGlockenshire wrote: | How do you propose they perform the physical swap? | | The space vehicles we used for this purpose have been retired | and we have no replacements. | woodruffw wrote: | > Am I missing something here? | | When dealing with high-latency, high-radiation environments, | more modern isn't necessarily better: denser ICs mean greater | susceptibility to radiation (and consequently more expensive | hardening). They also can't exactly fly up there and swap out | random bits on short notice -- I'm not sure if the US even has | a the current capability to perform physical maintenance on the | Hubble. | LadyCailin wrote: | They don't. | | > Hertz said that because Hubble was designed to be serviced | by the space shuttle and the space shuttle fleet has since | been retired, there are no future plans to service the outer | space observatory. | ellisv wrote: | It's in outer space | [deleted] | 0xFFFE wrote: | They should have gone serverless. | lbriner wrote: | I am no space expert but maybe they forgot to disable Android | system updates, that's what seems to have caused my Samsung Tab | S2 to slow to a crawl ;-) | guilhas wrote: | Google pushing unwanted apps | deeviant wrote: | Da, it's the ALIENS. | stevespang wrote: | Russian hackers ordered by Putin to embarrass the United States | sabujp wrote: | obviously cosmic rays | stakkur wrote: | _" If this computer were in the lab, we'd be hooking up monitors | and testing the inputs and outputs all over the place, and would | be really quick to diagnose it," he said. "All we can do is send | a command from our limited set of commands and then see what data | comes out of the computer and then send that data down and try to | analyze it."_ | | They've just mostly described my career. | bencollier49 wrote: | Still probably faster than deploying to AWS. | belter wrote: | "According to NASA, the 3 computers aboard the Hubble Space | Telescope contain over 50,000 lines of code in the C and | Assembly programming languages." | https://www.leeholmes.com/writing/hubble.pdf | | I am going to go out on a limb here and post my diagnostic: | There is some global counter that overflow as the system was | not rebooted for a while...NASA...take it from here :-) | thrower123 wrote: | Maybe the James Webb will go up some day... | tiborsaas wrote: | https://webbcountdown.com/ | occamschainsaw wrote: | When we power our quantum computers with room temperature | superconductors and sustainable fusion. | | (all 20 years away ofcourse) | peter303 wrote: | Scheduled for Halliween this year, but could slip. | jpeter wrote: | Sounds like the plot of the three body problem | hacker_homie wrote: | Tri-Solaris hacked the telescope and their coving it up? | pavlov wrote: | Microprobes dropped by 'Oumuamua are making sure humans don't | look where they're not supposed to. | | (It's UFO season! Everything is aliens again.) | dane-pgp wrote: | Perhaps it's time to coin the term Tsoukalos's Law of | Headlines. | teclordphrack2 wrote: | Could it be a windows update? | fouric wrote: | I know that, at different times, NASA has used Forth[1] and | Lisp[2] in some of their space applications. Both of these | languages offer REPLs that generally accelerate the debugging | process, and while your "average" Lisp might be unsuitable for | hard real-time applications (due to the presence of a garbage | collector, usually without the hard real-time constraints that | you _can_ get out of garbage collectors with extreme effort), I | wonder if they have _some_ equivalently interactive system on- | board the Hubble. | | > Most of Hubble's components have redundant back-ups, so once | scientists figure out the specific component that's causing the | computer problem, they can remotely switch over to its back-up | part. | | Wait, then why don't they just switch over each component in | turn? The "divide and conquer" debugging strategy. | | [1] https://www.forth.com/resources/space-applications/ | | [2] https://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html | beerandt wrote: | >"The rule of thumb is when something is working you don't | change it," Hertz said. "We'd like to change as few things as | possible when we bring Hubble back into service." | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | A lesson not taught to any modern software developer. Instead | they change things all the time for no real reason other than | that they want to change things. | 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: | One of the best senior engineers I worked with taught me | how to run an outage. The most important thing? _Stop_ what | you are doing, take charge, and get everyone else to stop | what they are doing. | | The best case scenario of a bunch of engineers flailing | about on a bridge turning knobs is that you luck into a fix | but don't know how you got there. But you're more likely to | make things worse. | boardwaalk wrote: | Sounds like "locking the doors" (Space Shuttle | disasters). Although, there was really not much to | recover from there. | etskinner wrote: | I hadn't heard of this before, chilling but cool: https:/ | /www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/13/columbia.space... | londons_explore wrote: | In my experience, the best strategy depends a lot on the | severity of the outage. | | If all the alarms are going off because of a loss of | redundancy, then currently there is no outage. The | correct move should be carefully considered, and maybe | tested in the sandbox environment. | | If there is currently a 100% outage, it's best to go all | out on trying every possible fix, because typically | you'll restore service quicker that way. Sure, | occasionally you dig yourself a deeper hole, but | _usually_ it 's the best strategy. | ComputerGuru wrote: | > If there is currently a 100% outage, it's best to go | all out on trying every possible fix, because typically | you'll restore service quicker that way. Sure, | occasionally you dig yourself a deeper hole, but usually | it's the best strategy. | | Maybe. _Once an outage has happened_ , an additional 30 | minutes or hour of outage, depending 100% on the service | in question, might be a bearable cost if it means | preventing a domino effect of future issues caused by | measures taken to restore the outage in a hurry. | CGamesPlay wrote: | > If there is currently a 100% outage, it's best to go | all out on trying every possible fix, because typically | you'll restore service quicker that way. Sure, | occasionally you dig yourself a deeper hole, but usually | it's the best strategy. | | Almost assuredly not. If a system hits a 100% outage, | there are about to be a series of cascading failures by | dependent systems. If you don't even understand which | system is the root cause, all you're doing is testing a | bunch of never-before-tried combinations in production | and hoping something works. | grumple wrote: | This is not true. If something's working, you don't change | it for no reason. | | Business requirements and requests change _all the time_. | 90% of our work is done in response to that. The other 10% | is fixing up technical problems due to increased scaling or | bugs found, and then basically never do we upgrade a system | to keep up with security updates or change to a more modern | tech. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | > This is not true. If something's working, you don't | change it for no reason | | Sure, there's often a reason like "we wanted to write it | in a different language" or "we've overhauled the UI to | be slower and more cumbersome". | Nextgrid wrote: | "we need to justify our front-end developers' and | designers' jobs" | skylanh wrote: | Another comment keyed onto a concrete example of why not, so | I'll go with a presumptive reason: | | Some of those elements will be part of the major service | windows, and have expected operational and standby lifetimes. | | So if a component with two elements has a service window of 10 | years, and each element contributes to meeting that service | window, then you've bumped your major service window from 10 | years to a significant factor less than that. | | e.g. the expected use profile might be: use element 1 for 6 | years or 60% of service, switch to element 2 for 4 years, | replace both during 10 year maintenance window. Interrupting | that by bringing element 2 up reduces that window and | contingency plans if the service window cannot be met. | | I don't know, and I'm just talking out my you-know-what. | edgeform wrote: | > Wait, then why don't they just switch over each component in | turn? The "divide and conquer" debugging strategy. | | Let's say the CPU is the actual issue, but the problem | manifests itself in the memory module. You swap over to the | backup memory module, and suddenly the problem vanishes! | | Two months later, the problem manifests again. Identical | presentation. This time, there is no backup to switch over to | test. | | You fly a Very Expensive Mission to the telescope only to find | out the CPU was the issue, and if you had figured that out | originally you wouldn't be up here with four memory modules. | nucleardog wrote: | Let's say the memory is the actual issue, but it's manifested | itself by data being corrupted and triggering undesired | behaviour. Unfortunately, the corrupted state has already | been written back to persistent storage. | | So you swap in the backup storage module and all your | problems go away. Until it happens again and corrupts _that_ | too. | rurban wrote: | Forth yes, lisp not. Lisp was only used on ground to simulate | the rover. | | Also a repl in space only makes sense in earth orbit, but not | farther away, with 8-20min waiting time for a packet roundtrip | to Mars. Those machines really need proper and faster decision | making (AI, think lots of `if` statements and proper modeling) | on board, eg to perform landing or docking maneuvers. Or to | detect and workaround radiation damage in its own circuits. | dylan604 wrote: | What if you backup is failing in the exact same way? | Koshkin wrote: | That would probably mean that the whole thing just isn't | there anymore. | dylan604 wrote: | Or much more likely the same component was used as a back | up, and is failing in a similar fashion. It's obvious the | thing is still there. | etskinner wrote: | > Wait, then why don't they just switch over each component in | turn? The "divide and conquer" debugging strategy. | | My guess would be that they want to try that method only if | this debugging doesn't work. Imagine that there's an electrical | issue in item 1 that fries item 2. If you switch over to item | 2b, then you fry item 2b too! | | This is exactly what happened with the Soviet Salyut 7 station. | They tripped an over-current protection, didn't fix the root | issue, and remotely turned the circuit back on. A series of | electrical shorts then rendered the entire station without | power, resulting in the need for one of the most daring station | rescue stories of all time: | | https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-sov... | voldacar wrote: | Wow, that's an amazing story. Thanks for posting, i had no | idea something like that ever took place | dmckeon wrote: | > Mission controllers, very tired now that the end of their | 24-hour shift was approaching | | Are shifts this long still common practice in US or RU space | programs? | baryphonic wrote: | > while your "average" Lisp might be unsuitable for hard real- | time applications (due to the presence of a garbage collector, | usually without the hard real-time constraints that you can get | out of garbage collectors with extreme effort), I wonder if | they have some equivalently interactive system on-board the | while your "average" Lisp might be unsuitable for hard real- | time applications (due to the presence of a garbage collector, | usually without the hard real-time constraints that you can get | out of garbage collectors with extreme effort), I wonder if | they have some equivalently interactive system on-board the | Hubble. | | This is fascinating to me. Do you have any pointers to | information/research/projects focused on hard real-time garbage | collection? A Lisp with hard real-time garbage collection (even | if Herculean to implement) would be fantastic. | retrac wrote: | I've seen at least one implementation that uses explicit | regions; before doing something with say a bunch of cons | operations, you allocate a region, all the evaluation is done | in the region, it returns a result to the parent region, and | the region is then manually dropped, freeing the space used. | Set up another region for the next large evaluation and so | on. | | Almost C style, and I'm sure just as error prone, but it | seems like it could work. | | https://github.com/wolfgangj/bone-lisp | mietek wrote: | How about a Lisp without the need for garbage collection at | all? | | http://web.archive.org/web/20020331165324/http://home.pipeli. | .. | retrac wrote: | Ah, Rust's grandparent! | baryphonic wrote: | This is also fascinating. Thank you! :) | astrange wrote: | As long as there aren't cycles of course you can do | deterministic GC, it's just reference counting. It also helps | if the program is single-threaded since otherwise any memory | allocation/freeing can be unpredictable (since it probably | locks.) | guenthert wrote: | Not exactly real time (as in proven bounded response time), | but a noteworthy effort: https://franz.com/services/conferenc | es_seminars/jlugm00/conf... | rtkwe wrote: | > Wait, then why don't they just switch over each component in | turn? The "divide and conquer" debugging strategy. | | It's better to understand the problem than to just start | changing stuff hoping you find the right thing even | systematically. There's not a huge rush to fix this since it's | the payload computer and the telescope is still being | maintained by other systems. A lot bad could happen, if the | switching system is flakey you could maybe get stuck in a bad | system, or if there's a number of faults you might damage one | of the backups. Without the shuttle there's not a plan to | service it any more so why take the risk rushing through to the | most simplistic debugging method? | lalalandland wrote: | Could computer issue be related to increased solar activity/ | solar storms ? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuGY8foAiHc&t=636s | dave_sid wrote: | This thing? | https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/0/07/Tumbl... | desktopninja wrote: | For pure comedic value: Someone deployed a K8s cluster on hubble | and now its lost DNS because the master nodes connected to a | starlink satellite | Koshkin wrote: | This is good: Starlink or such would be probably an ideal way | to connect a space telescope (or any spacecraft) to the | internet. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | Actually, it wouldn't be. Starlink orbits at about the same | altitude, but the satellites have their radio antenna pointed | downwards to Earth, so they can't connect with each other. | beerandt wrote: | Starlink has lateral uplink/downlink lasers, but yes that | would be a complicated solution to a problem that doesn't | exist. | NortySpock wrote: | Last I heard laser links were in testing, and was | currently only being used for communicating in the same | orbit (a single, linear string of satellites all orbiting | in the same plane and at the same altitude) | nonameiguess wrote: | They actually use the NRO's Quasar relay satellites for this. | They don't connect to the "internet," but rather to NRO | mission ground stations, but they need that single point of | ingress to Earth anyway because the hardware decryption | modules, algorithms, and key-loading mechanisms only exist in | military comms equipment, not IP routers. From there, | provided the data itself is unclassified or can be | downgraded, it can get to the Internet. | | It's arguably an interesting question whether the government | would consider using commercial relay satellites instead of | just the Quasar constellation, though. The data stream | doesn't need to be decrypted on the satellite, just | forwarded. Obviously, you can't prevent radio from being | intercepted, so throwing in a hop you don't own doesn't | actually add any risk. You're totally reliant on the strength | of your encryption either way. | dylan604 wrote: | More likely they got it to run Doom. | desktopninja wrote: | Hehe: https://opensource.com/article/21/6/kube-doom | optimalsolver wrote: | https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-02-17 | Animats wrote: | NASA has a Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office developing on- | site robotic servicing capabilities for the Hubble and other | large satellites. This is connected to the On Orbit Servicing, | Assembly, and Manufacturing program at NASA Goddard. They've been | working toward this for a decade.[1] | | No part of that effort has actually repaired anything in space. | | [1] https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam/index.html | Iwan-Zotow wrote: | Putin? | unnouinceput wrote: | Quote: "Most of Hubble's components have redundant back-ups, so | once scientists figure out the specific component that's causing | the computer problem, they can remotely switch over to its back- | up part." | | So it's time to do what every gamer does when the rig fails. | Switch parts and see who's the culprit. And yes, I do understand | the next quote: <"The rule of thumb is when something is working | you don't change it," Hertz said. "We'd like to change as few | things as possible when we bring Hubble back into service."> | | But between having nothing anymore, since Hubble had its last | maintenance in 2009 (per quote: "The last time astronauts visited | Hubble was in 2009 for its fifth and final servicing mission.") | and have something now that definitely would fail later, I'd | choose the latter. | scoutt wrote: | > At first NASA scientists wondered if a "degrading memory | module" on Hubble was to blame. | | Funny enough, nobody posted the link to the article that says | "70% of bugs are memory issues" (or something like that) yet. | Black101 wrote: | There's no way that's true... maybe 70% of bugs that crash your | computer though. | TwoBit wrote: | "memory issue" seems overly broad or vague. | lamontcg wrote: | 70% of all security fixes Microsoft releases are memory safety | bugs. | | https://news.hitb.org/content/microsoft-70-percent-all-secur... | | This isn't a security issue, NASA isn't Microsoft, and | physically degraded memory isn't the same as a memory safety | programming bug. | | I'll certainly bet that article is super popular with the rust | crowd though. | steveklabnik wrote: | That article specifically is popular with the Rust crowd, | yes, but moreover, that roughly that number (70%-80%) has | been replicated by a multiple big tech companies, not just | Microsoft. Chrome was another large name. | | (And yes you're right none of this has to do with this stuff, | for sure.) | behnamoh wrote: | Off-topic but it reminded me of that story about using LISP for | debugging a spacecraft remotely from the Earth: | | https://baltazaar.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/a-story-about-lis... | bguberfain wrote: | Extreme remote debug | tyingq wrote: | From a NASA post 2 days ago[1]: | | "The operations team is investigating whether the Standard | _Interface (STINT) hardware, which bridges communications between | the computer's Central Processing Module (CPM) and other | components, or the CPM itself is responsible for the issue. The | team is currently designing tests that will be run in the next | few days to attempt to further isolate the problem and identify a | potential solution. "_ | | So "can't figure out" sounds more like "haven't yet figured out", | but they have remaining ideas to play through. | | [1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/operations- | underwa... | jsrcout wrote: | A better headline for the article: | | NASA hasn't yet figured out what's causing computer issues on the | Hubble telescope | literallyaduck wrote: | I heard from an insider that it was a popup from an unlicensed | copy of winrar, I have notified my neighbors and the braintrust | of grandchildren, nephews, nieces and a corgi are working out a | solution, unfortunately they are having problems getting | minecraft, roboblox and fortnight to work with the payload | software. The experts who originally wrote the code and then | retired and are unable to help since the suffered from covid | related 5g headaches. The management then outsourced the problem | but cannot understand the contractors not because of a language | barrier but because on Zoom debugging calls they are required to | wear masks even though an ocean separates them. Never fear I'm | dual booting Arch (BTW) and Windows 11 and have written a | preliminary AI, Blockchain, ML application in Visual Basic and am | on the case, it now routes through an Android app on the Amazon | app store that can communicate to a Ham tower through a TNC and a | Baofeng radio but I am waiting on a part from an overseas | shipment. FedEx says it is still in transit on the "Ever given" | which was routed through Ireland and was blocked by a creature | called the waterhorse, but I gave it tree fiddy. | programmer_an wrote: | Programmer/analyst here and ready to help you NASA, just ask me | and I'll clear a few hours of my agenda for you. I know people | say this a lot, but in this case I really think a (at least | partial) rewrite in Rust of the Hubble software would be very | beneficial. We could gather some of the most distinguished coders | here in hacker-news and create a task force to show them the | benefits of rust's memory safety. | rurban wrote: | Then maybe lookup "stack overflow" in rust, and you will be | delighted. https://github.com/rust- | lang/rust/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Ao... | | 583 closed, 156 open. That much to "memory safety" in rust. | qayxc wrote: | I'm not sure you understand what "memory safety" means. | ignoranceprior wrote: | Not sure if serious or joking. Poe's law. | xf1cf wrote: | From what I gathered the problem is in the _memory module_ and | not memory itself. It would be like your RAM failing. No amount | of rust or memory safety can help with that. Moreover you don't | exactly re-upload the entire Hubble system from earth. You may | be interested in looking into NASA's actual software integrity | requirements as they are quite stringent and one of the reasons | they use some antiquated languages. Rust is far too new, young, | and buggy to even consider. | | Appreciate the seemingly ever present optimism of rustaceans to | golden hammer the language though. | acuozzo wrote: | Can you clear a few hours on your agenda for me? | | I'd like to learn how to use Rust to work around memory | corruption resulting from irradiating the hell out of the RAM | in my PC at home. | | I'm talking enough radiation to flip more bits than ECC is | capable of detecting & fixing. | | I want to do all of my programming remotely... right next to | the the Elephant's Foot. | bilekas wrote: | Have they tried turning it off and on again ? | nemacol wrote: | Time for some percussive maintenance. | dylan604 wrote: | Last I heard, it's not running any version of Windows. | Koshkin wrote: | Looks like they may have but the thing didn't come back on. | rajandatta wrote: | Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the | dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's | incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. | | There doesn't seem to be any nuance or respect that they're | trying to repair an orbiting telescope that was launched 30 years | ago and designed 40 years ago - and that people are patiently | trying to sort through a fully autonomous system 400 miles above | the surface of the Earth with a very large set of failure | options. | | For me - huge props to NASA and other organizations that do this | kind of work and keep these systems running for decades. I need | to reboot Windows every 2-3 days | bamboozled wrote: | No, I just read it like they must have a really hard problem | and hope they find a solution soon. | asymptosis wrote: | I thought they were riffing on recent UFO hype. | spockz wrote: | To me this title comes across as just factual and not | diminutive in any way. | foxpurple wrote: | Can't work out gives a sense that they have tried everything | and failed. "Haven't worked out yet" is still factual and | implies that they are still working on it. | davesque wrote: | Yeah, I hear you on that. Another possibility is that NPR is | trying to manufacture a sense of mystery or surprise as | journalists often do with science stories. A bit less nefarious | but also sort of annoying in its own way. | JJMcJ wrote: | Either mystery or bad puns based on the science. | | Extra points if you can throw "Einstein" in the headline. | mancerayder wrote: | > trying to manufacture a sense of mystery or surprise | | That's a positive spin on clickbait. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | It's more than annoying. It comes part and parcel with the | dumbing down of society. | geoduck14 wrote: | Most of my work could benefit from a journalist | | > Overworked Engineer misses semicolon. All night review | session finds it, data gets loaded! | | > Management insists Jira stories be routed to new Epic. | Team Lead spends hours learning Jira API before giving up | and doing it "the hard way" | tharkun__ wrote: | Completely not related to the topic at hand but ;) | | I love this "spend hours figuring out the API" then | giving up. | | Maybe it's just me but I have noticed that a lot (and it | mean a lot) of devs will overestimate greatly on anything | manual they need to do that they don't like. And spend | hours if not days trying to automate it. Which is fine if | it's gonna be needed again soon or over and over. But | really, what is so bad in spending literally 5 minutes | doing the above manually with a Jira filter and bulk | edit? And by extension sometimes there's not even a bulk | edit and you need to do something by clicking the same 5 | steps 50 times to acgieve something. Again 5 minutes of | actual work. Just put on a nice fast song from whatever | music genre you happen to love and do it. Done. | | Is it just me? | jcun4128 wrote: | I find a lot of content on YT is like that. The actual work | is skipped hand-waved then it's every other second cut | scene and some music on top... Idk. Started unsubscribing | from channels lately. Still some good ones. | mhh__ wrote: | > Anyone else look at the headline and feel this is one of the | dumbest headlines ever. It makes it sound like NASA's | incompetent. 'Why haven't you fixed Hubble yet?'. | | I didn't get that impression. | | This does intrigue me - I like browsing hackernews, but I often | get the impression that some people (not the PC specifically) | here are either ridiculously anal about English or genuinely do | not parse sentences the way I do. | skissane wrote: | > I often get the impression that some people (not the PC | specifically) here are either ridiculously anal about English | or genuinely do not parse sentences the way I do. | | People with autistic traits sometimes parse sentences in an | overly literal or precise manner. I rarely do this anymore, | but when I was a child and teenager I did it more often. | | When I'm speaking of "autistic traits", I'm not speaking just | of people diagnosed with autism/ASD (who are of course | represented here), but also people with broad autism | phenotype (BAP), the subclinical manifestation of ASD. BAP is | when you have more of the symptoms of ASD than the average | person does, but not enough to justify an actual diagnosis of | ASD. BAP is quite common in software engineers, and STEM | professionals more generally, so I think there are likely a | lot of people on this site with BAP (albeit most of them have | probably never heard of it.) The people you are talking about | quite possibly do have some degree of BAP, and this behaviour | is quite possibly a manifestation of their BAP. | jacobwilliamroy wrote: | I think you may be projecting some self esteem issues here. | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | i once read an article on most probably arstechnica about a nasa | enthusiast who found some space probe documentation in someones | garage. he goes on to actually use that to communicate with the | probe and issue commands. something like the booster had emptied | or leaked or something. i am not sure what exactly it was. that | was a fascinating read | NortySpock wrote: | http://spacecollege.org/isee3/ | | Solar probe sent to comet, rebooted years later to try to put | it back into it's solar mission. | DudeInBasement wrote: | Probably someone doesn't understand cache and flushing/invalidate | SniperOwl wrote: | "Nobody uses a computer over 20 years old" - Apple Excitives | dangerface wrote: | Did they try turning it off and on? | programmer_an wrote: | I know people say this a lot, but in this case I really think a | (at least partial) rewrite in Rust of the Hubble software would | be very beneficial. We could gather some of the most | distinguished coders here in hacker-news and create a task force | to show them the benefits of rust's memory safety. | dang wrote: | This is the third time you've posted this. Please stop. | setug wrote: | Wouldn't it be a good idea to open the source code for community | inspection? Of course NASA would panic with Russia and China | inspecting for "hostile" actions, but hey, if they don't know | what to do, why not calling the expert reverse engineers of the | world? | beerandt wrote: | Idk about the payload computer, but I've got to think guidance | and operation controls would have at least some remnants of | legacy keyhole technology, or would expose hardware details | that might still be sensitive information, even if the software | was a total rewrite. | setug wrote: | It's a 30/40-yr old code and hardware. Now that I think about | it, the problem could be related to some "exotic" decisions | made by that time... | beerandt wrote: | Lots of 30/40 year old hardware is still classified, | especially spy technology. | setug wrote: | Then hiding it when it's on Earth could make sense, | actually attacking Hubble is much more complicated that | anything on earth, given that you can actually put your | hands on it, connecting through a JTAG and understanding | what's wrong (besides spying). | _joel wrote: | Hubble is basically a US spy satellite, pointing outwards | instead of inwards. I'm sure there will be similar classes of | hardware still in operation, so could be some sensitivity | there. | beerandt wrote: | Yeah- that's what keyhole is: a codename for a series of | nro/ nga spy sats. | | Edit: and Hubble was built from a surplus skeleton of one, | through a government transfer. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Hole | recov wrote: | Interesting thought. I would say something like the hubble | transcends politcal/governmental boundaries... although I do | wonder how much if its software is used in other secretive | satellites. | jandrese wrote: | Hubble is basically a repurposed spy satellite so it may | still be sensitive. Although I doubt any of its sisters are | still flying. | hindsightbias wrote: | They are believed to have lifespans as long as Hubble. The | last block 4 was launched in 2013. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-245 | | USA-314, launched this year, is allegedly a KH derivative. | jandrese wrote: | Hubble has only lasted as long as it has because it was | serviced on 4 separate occasions--although one of those | was to fix a manufacturing defect. I don't think any of | the spysats had service missions. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | No one knows for sure publicly, but NRO offered two more | KeyHole bodies to NASA some years back. That's may be a | hint they're considered obsolete. | rurban wrote: | On the contrary I doubt that the US military would give up | advanced imaging technology, like reading car plates from | space, for nothing. That's the Hubble. Nothing else comes | close. | jonegan wrote: | I volunteer as rubber duck! | datalus wrote: | How specific is the Hubble that you can only repair it with the | Space Shuttle? o_O | Denvercoder9 wrote: | It doesn't have anything to do with specificity, the Space | Shuttle was just the only manned spacecraft powerful enough to | get out to Hubble's orbit and back, and that had an airlock so | you could actually access Hubble. | rtkwe wrote: | All the operating human launch systems are just capsules meant | to either free fly or dock at a station, they don't have | airlocks to let people out so using them for a Hubble repair | would require a lot of modification and danger to use the whole | capsule as an airlock. [0] | | [0] Except Soyuz I guess their orbital module would allow you | to keep the descent module pressurized but it's still way | outside the design so there's no telling if the module would | remain operational. | jccooper wrote: | Soyuz has been used for spacewalks before, and the cabin is | tolerant of vacuum. They haven't done that in ages, so it's | possible that's been optimized out, but I'd suspect that | requirement's been respected over the years. | jandrese wrote: | The Space Shuttle is the only vehicle ever built that can do | in-orbit service. It's not that the Hubble is special in that | regard, it is that the Shuttle was special. | datalus wrote: | So does this also mean that the ISS is no longer able to get | serviced, or are there projects to work on in-orbit service | vehicles? | dragonwriter wrote: | > So does this also mean that the ISS is no longer able to | get serviced, or are there projects to work on in-orbit | service vehicles? | | AIUI, The ISS can be serviced from the ISS if the | appropriate supplies and personnel are sent up, but it | doesn't have the delta-V to zip around other orbits | servicing other satellites, so it is okay without the the | shuttle _for itself_ , but doesn't substitute for it for | other things needing orbital service. | yupper32 wrote: | ISS has airlocks that allow you to leave without removing | all the air from the rest of the ship. Vehicles like a | Dragon can attach their port to ISS, board, and then | perform a space walk through the ISS's airlock. | | Hubble is different. It's not like it's a ship that you can | board. So you need two things: Ability to attach yourself | to Hubble, and ability to leave Dragon to perform a | spacewalk. It's not clear whether you can just have | everyone in the Dragon suit up and open the hatch. And even | then, you still need to attach yourself to Hubble somehow. | I think you can via the port... but then you can't leave. | Unless you go out the other door? Can you open that from | the inside and get out with a space suit? | | My rambling isn't meant to be an actual answer. It's more | to show that it's wayyyy harder than "Let's just send up | some people to Hubble!". | bluGill wrote: | These problems could be solved. However no current space | craft is designed the right way. Maybe it is a trivial | modification to Dragon (making it bigger...), maybe it is | better to start from scratch. That is a question for | domain experts who probably haven't given the idea enough | consideration to give a good answer. | Phillips126 wrote: | Damn Windows updates... | | Getting downvoted so I guess I need to clarify I was being | sarcastic. I work in IT and we say this a lot. | [deleted] | macintux wrote: | Humor that doesn't contribute to the conversation is generally | discouraged. | quenix wrote: | I'm not sure I understand this. Humor generally doesn't | "contribute to a discussion"--it's purely that, humorous. I'm | not sure how OP's comment contributes any less than any other | joke one could have made. | macintux wrote: | Really clever humor can entertain and educate, although | admittedly it's rare. | | The most common sentiment I see when people attempt cheap | jokes is that Reddit is a more appropriate forum. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-24 23:00 UTC)