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Mars rover is frozen in place following software error
- benburleson 7y agoHaving worked on autonomous robot software, I'm willing to bet this is software taking the blame for a hardware issue :-)
- mqzkehfbazkebf 7y agoHaving worked on autonomous robot hardware i beg to differ
- vidanay 7y agoDefinitely a wetware problem.
- noobdood 7y agoProblem exists between keyboard and chair. Or soldering iron and bench.
- whatshisface 7y agoThe hardware and software both sit between the soldering iron and bench.
- noobdood 7y agoProves my point, right? :)
- SeekingMeaning 7y agoAh yes, the programmers blame the engineers, and the engineers blame the programmers
- pstuart 7y agoLet's not forget the compilers. They're always messing stuff up!
- salawat 7y agoYou don't blame the tool. You blame the toolmaker. Every real toolmaker is gifted with perfect precognitive capabilities so their tool behaves exactly as it should for all users, don'cha'know.
- WalterBright 7y agoNaw. It's always user error.
- pstuart 7y agoI should have included a /s, but was feeling a bit cheeky. I'm sure you've had to deal with plenty of spurious bug reports in your career :-)
- dvh 7y agoWhen Einstein worked on nuclear bomb the saying was: If he fails French will say he's American, Americans will say he's German, and Germans will say he's Jew. If he succeed Germans will say he's German, Americans will say he's American, and French will say he belongs to the world.
- schoen 7y agoHis comment was about the theory of relativity rather than the bomb: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#1910s https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#1910s
- conistonwater 7y agoEinstein didn't work on the nuclear bomb at all. According to https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-manhattan-project https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace-and-war/the-..., he wrote that famous letter to Roosevelt and was later denied the necessary security clearance.
- trianglem 7y agoWell clearly sir you are wrong and haveth no idea of which you speak
- pbalau 7y agoHaving worked on neither, I blame it on someone trying to impress a lady.
- ealfert 7y agoBig Bang Theory reference? When Howard was trying to impress a girl? https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Mars_Rover https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/Mars_Rover
- jackmodern 7y agoyep.
- boublepop 7y agoHaving worked with both autonomous robot hardware and software engineers. I’m certain it’s a communication problem. Not between software and hardware mind you, one between humans.
- RuleOfBirds 7y agoNo burn, but having worked outside the domain of autonomous robots, I'm willing to place the blame on an autonomous robot issue
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lizknope 7y agoAs a hardware engineer it doesn't matter if it is a hardware bug. Software should work around it.
- hmbe 7y agoI have been working designing both hardware and firmware for autonomous robots for the last 6 years. When asked if a problem is hardware or software you provide the same answer if someone asks you if you are a god... you say YES!
- kzzzznot 7y agoWould appreciate any technical info from someone who knows more about this, the article is not targeted to a technical audience.
- Donald 7y agoHere is a description of the problem from a UC Davis geobiologist who is using the rover to study habitability. https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8587/sols-2649-2652-curiosity-loses-its-attitude/ https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8587/sols-2649-265...
- 1123581321 7y agoA developer I know at JPL has been quite stressed about this operation. Unfortunately I can’t speak to details of the software changes.
- Donald 7y agoNASA is now reporting the problem as fixed: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8589/sols-2653-2655-attitude-adjustment/ https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8589/sols-2653-265... (Press article at https://www.space.com/mars-rover-curiosity-attitude-glitch.html https://www.space.com/mars-rover-curiosity-attitude-glitch.h...)
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThis seems to be no big deal. Stuff like this is how learn to do real world robotics.
- ceejayoz 7y agoSure, but your heart is probably still going to skip a few beats when you realize a software glitch has halted a $2.5 billion device.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAbsolutely. But these types of glitches are necessary to learn about real world problems.
- capableweb 7y agoAnd then to resume to slightly-above normal heart beats when you remember it was designed for way less time/usage than it actually survives. Guess we'll see if this is the final stone or not, apparently they are trying to get it right again (thinking about that, wonder how it feels to deploy a hotfix to another fucking planet)
- ISL 7y agoViewed another way, a successful bugfix brings a $2.5B instrument back to life.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAnd it demonstrates that the design allowed bug fixes while the rover is on another planet. I view this as big success for the engineering. They did a great job. It’s more important to have the ability to fix bugs than avoiding bugs.
- danimal88 7y agoAssuming your bug fix mechanism is bug free...
- rowanG077 7y agoWhat a shitty title. The entire article doesn't even contain the word software.
- mnemonicsloth 7y ago> Thanks to Curiosity, we have a better idea of where water existed (and may still exist) on Mars, as well as where we might be able to find evidence of ancient life. I don't understand why everyone is so excited about finding life on Mars. Life on Mars means life may be relatively common on water-bearing planets, which means the Filter is more likely to ahead of us than behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc
- russdill 7y agoLife on Mars could be related to life on Earth as both bodies have traded mass quite regularly over the last few billion years.
- dariusj18 7y agoWe don't have any evidence of life being common.
- mnemonicsloth 7y agoTrue. But we have prima facie evidence that advanced civilizations -- as advanced as we're about to be, in not very much longer -- are very rare.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nickthemagicman 7y agoFinding life on other planets means life was probably seeded on earth instead of the 'Spontanous Generation' theory of biology where RNA just happened on earth at some point. It also opens up the possibilities of life existing outside of earth. I don't know whats not mind blowing about that.
- mnemonicsloth 7y agoAs a biologist, it's pretty cool, although not quite as cool because it's the same life. Different life, evolved on different planets, would be cooler. It would use some of the same tools, like phosphates as signaling/energy molecules, because nothing else can do the job. But alien life could use different amino acids from the ones we use, or something different from amino acids instead. They would probably be linear polymers of related monomers though. The same goes for DNA: different base units probably, but still a linear polymer, and very possibly a helix (lots of things are helices). But the problem with all these instances of life is that all but n of them have to get snuffed out before they've developed much further than we are, and so far as we know n has to be either 1 or 0.
- lisper 7y agoA better title would be: Mars rover stops moving because it lost track of its orientation. This is uncommon, but well within the realm of "normal" contingencies. And in fact it has already been fixed.
- julianozen 7y ago: The Curiosity Story
- Aeolun 7y agoCan’t we just send a few humans already? The wouldn’t be able to stay there for years, but it’d be a few orders of magnitude more efficient.