Rumbles of a programing error causing the Russian Lunar mission failure.
Rumbles of a programing error causing the Russian Lunar mission failure.
Perhaps the 84 second burn overflowed the integer (26) and was caught by a 27s check (127s)
25 comments
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there's no way engine burn time is graduated in seconds on a spacecraft in 2023, that's way too coarse
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i can see doing one burn that is kind of rough, then evaluating the situation and applying some correction?
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Why do you expect the Russian space program to be using new equipment after the antique show of an invasion in Ukraine?
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Why in God's name would you use a 6-bit signed integer for anything on a spacecraft? I know space-certified chips are pretty barebones, but surely not that bare bones...
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This is Roscosmos we're talking about here. First lunar mission in 25 years??
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The tweet you link didn't indicate that. It said that an engine failure likely caused the overrun, running for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84. Why would something have a 2^7 int size check?
Edit: Quoted
The head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov said that the main cause of the #Luna25 crash was an engine failure. Instead of the planned 84 seconds, he worked 127 seconds.
Am I missing something?
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what do we say to the god of software bugs ruining our space exploration? not today!
one of these days we will finally say it, but... not today 😆
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Yes! I was hopeful after the close failure a few years ago!
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Mistakes happen. For example, may I introduce you to NASA's 125 million dollar Mars Climate Orbiter, which spent most of a year traveling to the Red Planet before ignominiously burning up because a Lockheed Martin programmer decided to write the thruster-firing calculations in Imperial units (feet and pounds) instead of following the specifications to use metric units (meters and kilograms).
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25 comments