21–30 of 128 posts
>Another challenge came in the form of the electronic wiring — most cables would melt from exposure to heat radiation at such close proximity to the Sun. To solve this problem, the team grew sapphire crystal tubes to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium. are these wires on the outside of the spacecraft? but what about the silicon of all the electronic stuff that this thing must be keeping? The cooling…
>This all has to happen without any human intervention, so the central computer software has been programmed and extensively tested to make sure all corrections can be made on the fly. I'd love to get some deeper insight into how NASA writes and tests software, I can only guess it's a million miles from how most of us work. Anyone know of any good talks, articles from engineers there?
Here's an article about it I read a while back, interesting read: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
It is complete overkill when "all" you're going to lose is a robot and some pride, as with a space probe you want to have lots of features and this level of safety is very restrictive on development effort.
More than likely, the spacecraft in question is written in C or C++ with the help of RTEMS or VxWorks. It is probably running a radiation hardened, very slow processor.
Dad joke: "They'll go at night" But really, it's cool that they're using carbon-carbon protection similar to that which was originally developed for the leading edges of the Space Shuttle. And I really want to know how they built foamed carbon for the interior. I'm guessing that they're using white ceramic paint on top instead of a reflective foil shield (like the Webb uses) because the foil would be shredded by the…
>This all has to happen without any human intervention, so the central computer software has been programmed and extensively tested to make sure all corrections can be made on the fly. I'd love to get some deeper insight into how NASA writes and tests software, I can only guess it's a million miles from how most of us work. Anyone know of any good talks, articles from engineers there?
Dad joke: "They'll go at night" But really, it's cool that they're using carbon-carbon protection similar to that which was originally developed for the leading edges of the Space Shuttle. And I really want to know how they built foamed carbon for the interior. I'm guessing that they're using white ceramic paint on top instead of a reflective foil shield (like the Webb uses) because the foil would be shredded by the…
>This all has to happen without any human intervention, so the central computer software has been programmed and extensively tested to make sure all corrections can be made on the fly. I'd love to get some deeper insight into how NASA writes and tests software, I can only guess it's a million miles from how most of us work. Anyone know of any good talks, articles from engineers there?
I can see how you would ensure reliability through proper requirements specification, a good software development process, separate independent implementations and extensive verification.
However, every time I read a popsci article about space flight software, they talk about this capability to push new code to the spacecraft while it is in flight.
I'm really curious to learn what this looks like in practice (technical details). Do they really have the ability to do an "ad-hoc" upload and execution of arbitrary code on these systems? If so, how are the ad-hoc programs tested and verified?
>This all has to happen without any human intervention, so the central computer software has been programmed and extensively tested to make sure all corrections can be made on the fly. I'd love to get some deeper insight into how NASA writes and tests software, I can only guess it's a million miles from how most of us work. Anyone know of any good talks, articles from engineers there?
The part that I find the most intriguing is "corrections can be made on the fly". I can see how you would ensure reliability through proper requirements specification, a good software development process, separate independent implementations and extensive verification. However, every time I read a popsci article about space flight software, they talk about this capability to push new code to the spacecraft while it i…
Dad joke: "They'll go at night" But really, it's cool that they're using carbon-carbon protection similar to that which was originally developed for the leading edges of the Space Shuttle. And I really want to know how they built foamed carbon for the interior. I'm guessing that they're using white ceramic paint on top instead of a reflective foil shield (like the Webb uses) because the foil would be shredded by the…
I'm curious about the foam, too. Normally, foam contains a lot of air. But that kind of foam will blow itself apart in a vacuum. How do they make foam where all the air pockets are replaced with vacuum? Is vacuum-filled foam a better or worse insulator than air-filled foam?
Dad joke: "They'll go at night" But really, it's cool that they're using carbon-carbon protection similar to that which was originally developed for the leading edges of the Space Shuttle. And I really want to know how they built foamed carbon for the interior. I'm guessing that they're using white ceramic paint on top instead of a reflective foil shield (like the Webb uses) because the foil would be shredded by the…
I'm curious about the foam, too. Normally, foam contains a lot of air. But that kind of foam will blow itself apart in a vacuum. How do they make foam where all the air pockets are replaced with vacuum? Is vacuum-filled foam a better or worse insulator than air-filled foam?