Was the spacecraft from the event described in the article an actual spacecraft in space or a simulation of a space mission on the ground?
How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
61–70 of 160 posts
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seconding the vxWorks and bare metal. Never seen Windows or Linux on a satellite bus. Haven't really touched payloads but I've seen some wonky things shipped to orbit by universities and not all them have been cubesat student projects.
Every Starlink runs with Linux. The license list is a bit long: https://www.starlink.com/assets/pdfs/Starlink-Open-Source-Co...
that doesn't state what uses linux, angular.io is also on there
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#63Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seconding the vxWorks and bare metal. Never seen Windows or Linux on a satellite bus. Haven't really touched payloads but I've seen some wonky things shipped to orbit by universities and not all them have been cubesat student projects.
Every Starlink runs with Linux. The license list is a bit long: https://www.starlink.com/assets/pdfs/Starlink-Open-Source-Co...
That's likely software for the receiver/router/CPE that customers use, since it's being distributed they have to satisfy license obligations for it.
Software actually running on satellites isn't being distributed, so there's no license obligations there (unless it's AGPL, ha!)
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#65And here I thought we were going to rehash Crowdstrike ;-)
I know you kid, but theoretically running crowdstrike-susceptible windows on a spacecraft would work fine (at least I claim so), because you'd need a robust backdoor / OOB into it anywa (And I'm no windows fanboy, I hate them just as much as the next guy). Crowdstrike bug would cause an N-day loss of comms just like a thousand other things they plan for in a spacecraft.
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I wouldn't be stoked to run Linux on them either to be honest. But both are being done. Practicality rules I suppose.
What's the practical benefit of using Windows here?
Maybe technically you could save $89 and run pirated windows because of (possibly?) no jurisdiction in space?
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#67Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the practical benefit of using Windows here?
Easier to find developers who are comfortable with Windows.
Probably not the case in spacecraft engineering.
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question, what would you use instead and why?
Real Time Operating System(s) like VxWorks. Commodity equipment running specialized distros of Linux is a growing thing however.
What parts would actually need realtime response? Only thing I can think of would be thrusters, but wouldn't that be solved by an asic? Essentially a network command where you say "I don't care specifically when you do this, but I'm requesting a correction of M-magnitude in this 3-vector. If I don't get an ack within 500ms cancel. "
Re: How to avoid a BSOD on your 2B dollar spacecraft
#70Thee 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 read the article, just read the title.
FWIW I found the writing style engaging and the content interesting. I guess the title is a little click-bait-y, but not in a way that I minded much, and I probably wouldn’t have read an article titled “How to avoid safemode on a satellite.” It’s a fine line, but titles DO have to draw you in, otherwise you’ll never read the article.
Re: the article itself, I did think it was pretty wild that customers have to be informed of every incident where a satellite flips into safemode in TESTING! In real operations, sure, but in testing, that’s wild. Feels like having to report bugs caught in my local dev environment, that were never deployed to prod.