Live data from Hacker News

Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

scientificamerican.com

71–72 of 72 posts

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#71
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It wouldn't help. The real problem is that they aren't comfortable with English. The reason English has all the documentation, all of the methodology, all of the literature, all of the community: network effects. A Japanese Stack Overflow would inevitably be less useful than access to the English Stack Overflow.

This, exactly. Stackoverflow does have Japanese version, and there are sites like Qiita for programmers to share knowledge. But the problem is most of the existing discussions are in English, and a Japanese version of the sites wouldn't help much except all contents are translated (not possible).

Re: Software error doomed Japanese Hitomi spacecraft

#72
post #10

It seems like the core error was in the inertial measurement unit: it would be a common cause between the reaction wheel failures and the failure of the despin burn.

Seems like the kind of thing one would have multiple of, along with voting, it should also contain a kalman filter. The software correcting the rotation should have been run in a tighter feedback loop so that it would stop making the problem worse. Lots of these subsystems can be tested in a pure software simulator. Esp when it comes to faults.

Thinking about it further, the simulator should consume the logs from the existing system and map those logs from existing simulation runs, use a form of compressed sensing and pattern matching to figure out what is occurring just from the logs and previous simulation runs.
Post reply on HN