Thee are a bunch of comments here asking why one would run Windows on a spacecraft. I am a spacecraft engineer. I don’t see anything in the linked article indicating that they are actually running Windows - the BSOD claim is tongue-in-cheek, or at least that’s how I read it. I also don’t know of anyone anywhere that runs Windows on a spacecraft, with the exception of laptops used by astronauts. Typically one runs vxW…
Indeed, and it’s clearly stated in the article: > Safemode is the satellite equivalent of a blue screen of death. It’s about avoiding safemode, and more generally about the end-to-end QA/testing process for satellites before they’re sent up into orbit. It’s very clearly not about actual Windows BSODs, it’s just written in a tongue-in-cheek style. Those commenting about “wtf windows on a spacecraft” clearly didn’t rea…
Because the customers are almost certainly running their own metrics, tracking failure rates over time. An increasing rate of failures across a program is probably a sign of something going wrong at a higher level. Remember too that there is "testing" and testing. One is you playing around with the software at your workstation, the other is the more formal testing as monitored by the acceptance and standards people.