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Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#51

Post by PKop »

ZoF wrote: post #36
ZoF wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! Political discussion regarding any topic is definitely off-topic. Lets go ahead and flag this as off-topic! Great job Dan! Tangentially related(or maybe directly related): would you find it off-topic if I were to openly support Donald Trump? That said(directly related to the above) If you do indeed think that nationalism is a bad thing can you please let us HN reader know why? As a White Male you're saying th…

Consider substantiating your down-votes friends? I have nothing to be ashamed about regarding my above represented personal opinion. Can anyone liberally inclined explain why a BLM activist can assualt a Trunmp supporter but the opposite would be met with derision? If someone attacks you(illegally) can you defend yourself or not? Does the race change the answer? We're all human.

You have to pick the time and place for this kind of discussion man. As much as I don't want SJW political rants to seep into technical discussions, so too many people will not have any interest in what you are saying because you're hijacking the topic at hand.

You can understand this point of view right?

Complaining about down votes, as well as breaking all the other guidelines that you are.. is guaranteeing you will get more down votes, regardless of people's opinion of what you're saying. If you want to persuade, you need to change your strategy.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#52

Post by PhantomGremlin »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #29
jupiter90000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the expected success rate for these missions, it just seemed odd that each time this particular instrument has been launched, an issue occurred to render it unusable. Maybe it is par for the course, but it does raise suspicions (at least in my mind).

Maybe it's something like the Martian-Anti-Lander-Defense System?

And before there was an Anti-Lander Defense System, there was another method employed by the Martians to hide things from our eyes:[1]

On November 14th 1971 NASA's Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to successfully orbit another planet.

...

Except what came back ... were not pictures of the intricate canyons, craters, and mountains of Mars, but pictures of a blanketed world, a dust enshrouded mystery. Mariner 9 had arrived in the midst of one of the greatest global storms humans have ever witnessed on Mars.

[1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-great...

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#53

Post by dwc »

johansch wrote: post #5
microcolonel wrote: post #2

This is just depressing. How was this not tested? This is complete sign reversal of a control output; you'd think it would show up immediately.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

I would call it a fluke.

Two things to keep in mind:

* Don't compare JAXA (or anyone else) to NASA at this point. We (the US) have a ton of experience, some of it bought the hard way.

* This isn't Japan's typical performance. They have a nice string of very good space science missions. And don't forget things like the Mars Climate Orbiter[1], where ground based commands sent it through the atmosphere due to a unit mix up.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#54

Post by PhantomGremlin »

johansch wrote: post #16
jlgaddis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote your original comment (just saw it and this one at the same time), but perhaps it has something to do with your blanket categorization of all Japanese software?

Well, if you read my comment properly, you'll realize that what I actually said is that large japanese hardware companies tend to be really bad at software. Nintendo is pretty much the one exception.

large japanese hardware companies tend to be really bad at software

That's probably true. But I think your statement is unnecessarily focused on Japan. The following is also true:

large hardware companies tend to be really bad at software

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#55

Post by schwarrrtz »

hga wrote: post #27
microcolonel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to feel that way; but yeah most software I see come out of Japan scares me. Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. I suspect it has to do with the scale of integrators in the country being much smaller, and lacking in terms of B2B collaboration. There are some jewels here and there, though. It's probably just a matter of cu…

Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. The analysis of Toyoda's software that might have been behind the claimed acceleration/can't stop the engine problems indicates that even there, at least Toyota is all but hopeless.

Yup.

> There are a large number of functions that are overly complex. By the standard industry metrics some of them are untestable, meaning that it is so complicated a recipe that there is no way to develop a reliable test suite or test methodology to test all the possible things that can happen in it. Some of them are even so complex that they are what is called unmaintainable, which means that if you go in to fix a bug or to make a change, you're likely to create a new bug in the process. Just because your car has the latest version of the firmware -- that is what we call embedded software -- doesn't mean it is safer necessarily than the older one….And that conclusion is that the failsafes are inadequate. The failsafes that they have contain defects or gaps. But on the whole, the safety architecture is a house of cards. It is possible for a large percentage of the failsafes to be disabled at the same time that the throttle control is lost.

> Even a Toyota programmer described the engine control application as “spaghetti-like” in an October 2007 document Barr read into his testimony.

http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#56

Post by aikinai »

johansch wrote: post #11
sitkack wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software isn't valued as much in Japan, and the pay isn't that high.

Nintendo seems to care quite a lot (I worked at Opera when the two companies built the Wii browser together. Wow. They were incredibly brutally perfectionist, in a painful but somehow admirable way. I've never seen a company doing so many iterations of some particular detail before that.) But yeah, I agree, whenever a large Japanese company that is not Nintendo does software (at least for consumers), you can pretty m…

That's cool to hear from the other side; I was at Nintendo for many years and worked closely with the team that directed the browser, so I know exactly who you're talking about (though I wasn't with them for the Wii browser). All Nintendo software is developed like that, and it's still different from how the major American software companies work, but it's very effective for what they do.

Obviously I'm biased, but I agree Nintendo is the only major Japanese company that has any idea how to write software. They also have a legacy of incredibly talented programmers that they respect more than most Japanese companies.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#57

Post by eggy »

microcolonel wrote: post #6
johansch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I have absolutely no insight into the software development practices of JAXA and their subcontractors, so I apologize if this is insensitive or uniformed.) Is this another sign of how bad japanese hardware -oriented companies and organizations are at doing software? Like the organisational software crisis at Toyota? Or was it a fluke?

I hate to feel that way; but yeah most software I see come out of Japan scares me. Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. I suspect it has to do with the scale of integrators in the country being much smaller, and lacking in terms of B2B collaboration. There are some jewels here and there, though. It's probably just a matter of cu…

I agree with @dwc, and would call it a fluke, possibly human error. In any case, there's no need to single out Japan on software.

After Russia, US, and China, Japan has the most satellites in orbit.

China which is always called on its quality control went 16 for 16 launches, and they launch other countries satellites too. They also landed on the moon in 2013. Ironically, they still can't make a ballpoint pen as good as the Japanese,Swiss or German ones due to consumer spending habits [1].

Somebody mentioned South Korea as a comparison. Well they only have 16 compared to Japan's 153 satellites. Japan's space program is scientific, while there are military launches in the US, Russia and China with those budgets hidden to develop such capability.

Japanese robotics are amazingly performant,so they must be doing something right there both hardware and software-wise. Realtime sensor data coupled with mechanics, mechatronics. Funny, anime has robots with rockets, and yet Japan produces the world's top humanoid robots vs. the military and seemingly menacing robots from Boston Dynamics (Alphabet, Google). Although, Atlas is giving Asimo a run for its money.

A lot of satellites were launched off of Soyuz (Russian) rockets too. The UK launched one satellite on its own rocket in 1971, and now piggybacks or rents time on satellites.

Space launches are expensive, technically challenging, and still risky. SpaceX lost the 8 cubesats on the June 28th launch failure. Mechanical, not software, but it shows the risks involved are not isolated to a single country over another, software or hardware.

  [1]  http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-make-good-ballpoint-pen

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#58

Post by desdiv »

ww520 wrote: post #48
jupiter90000 wrote: post #22

It seems very strange that the 3 missions that would deploy an X-ray calorimeter have all failed. I feel sad for the scientists who have been hoping to get a working one into space for what sounds like over 16 years now (based on the article).

Someone traveled from the future doesn't want those calorimeters up there?

Or aliens with cloaking ships that work in every spectrum except the X-ray one.

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#59

Post by krapp »

b123400 wrote: post #17
microcolonel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to feel that way; but yeah most software I see come out of Japan scares me. Outside of legally-critical software, such as automotive control systems: it doesn't seem that there is much focus on quality. I suspect it has to do with the scale of integrators in the country being much smaller, and lacking in terms of B2B collaboration. There are some jewels here and there, though. It's probably just a matter of cu…

I work for a Japanese company and sometimes work with people from other companies as well. Most of the people around me avoid English at their best, therefore cannot not access to the knowledge on stackoverflow, also documents in Japanese are usually old or incomplete. Of course it depends on the field (e.g. Japanese documents of ruby on rails are pretty good), I am not sure about aerospace engineering, but I'd not b…

> Most of the people around me avoid English at their best, therefore cannot not access to the knowledge on stackoverflow, also documents in Japanese are usually old or incomplete.

Is there not a Japanese version of Stack Overflow? Maybe there should be?

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#60

Post by rtkwe »

ww520 wrote: post #50
dwc wrote: post #18

This is the key passage: The spacecraft then automatically switched into a safe mode and, at about 4:10 a.m., fired thrusters to try to stop the rotation. But because the wrong command had been uploaded, the firing caused the spacecraft to accelerate further. (The improper command had been uploaded to the satellite weeks earlier without proper testing; JAXA says that it is investigating what happened.) Going into saf…

Isn't there a parallel simulator on the ground to try out the commands to see the effect before hand?

> The improper command had been uploaded to the satellite weeks earlier without proper testing

All the available testing programs in the world doesn't matter if the tests aren't run.

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