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NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

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Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#14
post #7

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.

Debugging on a computer that is down is not a very exciting process.

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#15

The cause of the failure is most likely tin whiskers [1] or radiation. [1] https://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/background/index.htm .

Is there evidence of either yet? I’m not sure how you get from “potential” failure mode to “most likely”

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#16
post #11
post #6

They should have moved to the cloud. /ducks

This is a truly stellar wit. But in all honesty, how would an internet across the solar system work?

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

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#17
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

Re: NASA can't figure out what's causing computer issues on the Hubble telescope

#19
post #14
post #7

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.

Debugging on a computer that is down is not a very exciting process.

I'll settle for the post-mortem
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