> JPL really doesn't want to be stuck when a probe is approaching a planet and a fix is needed Ironically, the point of this JPL Lisp project was spacecraft au

> JPL really doesn't want to be stuck when a probe is approaching a planet and a fix is needed Ironically, the point of this JPL Lisp project was spacecraft autonomy. When you're coming up on a flyby, light-hours from Earth, the standard fault-tolerance strategy (go into safe mode, wait for instructions) makes it physically impossible to satisfy mission goals. You need something smarter and more adaptable, and that's pretty hard to accomplish in the standard style of software in C they were used to. (I was there and read internal docs about the Remote Agent project this post was about.) Years later in the Pluto mission this nightmare almost happened: the probe went into safe mode ten days before the flyby, and they heroically fixed it over a few days of crunch time.