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

npr.org

101–110 of 333 posts

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

#101
post #6

They should have moved to the cloud. /ducks

They did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_...

Didn’t they also get a few older (Hubble type) spy satellites to use? I remember a story about that.

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

#102

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

http://spacecollege.org/isee3/

Solar probe sent to comet, rebooted years later to try to put it back into it's solar mission.

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

#104
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.

In case you haven't seen it: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/

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

#105
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?

Can’t wait to have gigabit speed on the moon while my home broadband still dies when I open a Netflix stream

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

#106
post #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…

> 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…

How about a Lisp without the need for garbage collection at all?

http://web.archive.org/web/20020331165324/http://home.pipeli...

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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."

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.

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.

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

#108
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Job Posting: NASA programmer, needs at least 1 wpm typing speed and experience with compiling large projects.

Best programmer. -1 wpm.

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

#109
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_...

Didn’t they also get a few older (Hubble type) spy satellites to use? I remember a story about that.

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.

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

#110
post #103

> 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.

There's no way that's true... maybe 70% of bugs that crash your computer though.
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