back to article Pluto probe brain OVERLOAD: Titsup New Horizons explained

NASA has explained in detail how its New Horizons deep-space probe suffered a computer meltdown just as it was moving in towards its destination: the tiny frost-world Pluto on the fringes of the Solar System. At 2pm Eastern Time on Saturday July 4 – Independence Day in the US – contact with the spacecraft was lost. The ground …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is proper engineering

    I'm not sure which bit of this story to admire most, but I'll go with:

    'The probe is now around eight million miles from Pluto. Over the next two weeks it will operate at maximum power to ensure its instruments can harvest all information possible as it whizzes by at 32,500 miles per hour.'

    Beats my daily routine of turn it off and on again.

    Maximum respect to the peeps in charge.

    1. Mark 85
      Pint

      Re: This is proper engineering

      Let's add a cold brew to that respect. They deserve it.

      Who would have thought back in the 60's that we would be landing an a comet (thanks EU!!!) and flying past Pluto? I still get excited by space news... almost like I'm back in grade school watching the early satellite and then the Mercury launches. Awe and wonder are in overload mode....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: This is proper engineering

        Well I wasn't around then, but in hindsight if I had been and seen how quickly things moved from "first artificial satellite" to "first man in space" to "first man on the Moon" I certainly would have thought we'd be doing bigger and better stuff than flying by Pluto and landing on a comet 46 years after Armstrong...

        Not to dismiss this accomplishment, but we haven't had a man outside Earth's gravity well for over four decades now which is pretty sad considering how fast things were moving in the 60s.

        1. Gene Cash Silver badge

          Re: This is proper engineering

          No kidding. In the '60s/'70s I had NASA posters of bases on the Moon and Mars, solar power satellites, dozens of manned Earth space stations to which you could buy tickets, recoverable multi-use boosters, and probes landed on just about everything that had a surface. These weren't random SF book posters, they were commissioned and published by NASA.

          It's strange that there were no rovers except the manned ones on the Moon. I just realized that.

          Apparently no one forecast a one-ton Mars-invading laser-toting nuclear-powered space truck named Curiosity.

          1. Nigel 11

            Re: This is proper engineering

            Apparently no one forecast a one-ton Mars-invading laser-toting nuclear-powered space truck named Curiosity

            I recall reading SF about lunar mining operations using tele-operated hardware controlled by people here on Earth, and how the speed of light made that bloody tricky.

            Given the capabilities, weight and power demand of computing hardware back then, it's unsurprising that nobody forecast machine "intelligence" sufficient to allow a Mars rover or Pluto probe to look after itself in real time while communications between it and Earth crawled along at the speed of light. CMOS (and Moore's law) didn't arrive until the late 70s. (I'm ignoring the sort of SF that postulated hardware that could support AI, with no plausible extrapolation from then-existing hardware.)

        2. Colin_Welwyn

          Re: This is proper engineering

          I agree with you sentiment but I'd like to point out we have never put a man (or woman) outside of earths gravity. What do you think stops the moon floating away?

          1. Gordon 10
            Joke

            Re: This is proper engineering

            Centrifugal Force!

          2. Mike Pellatt

            Re: This is proper engineering

            Well, yes, by that definition even the edge of the universe is still inside of earth's gravity. But the generally accepted definition is "beyond the point where other gravitational forces exceed that exerted by the Earth".

            Or something like that.

            1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

              Re: This is proper engineering

              Well, yes, by that definition even the edge of the universe is still inside of earth's gravity.

              Gravity well != gravity. There are other massive bodies out there, you know.

              Once outside the gravity well of a particular planet then a spacecraft will not fall back into it due to gravity alone.

          3. Zog_but_not_the_first
            Boffin

            Re: This is proper engineering

            Earth's gravity? {cough}Lagrange Point{cough}

        3. Charlie Clark Silver badge
          Thumb Down

          Re: This is proper engineering

          Not to dismiss this accomplishment, but we haven't had a man outside Earth's gravity well for over four decades now which is pretty sad considering how fast things were moving in the 60s.

          Do you happen to remember the size of NASA's budget in the 1960s? It was 3-4% of GDP during the Apollo programme and has been less than 1% for most of the time since. And the Apollo programme had pretty much only one aim: get a man on the moon. NASA has since had to spread the cash around: space shuttle, space stations, Hubble, etc.

          Even then manned spaceflight took up a disproportionate part of the budget as launching people means launching bigger spacecraft to accommodate them and the life support systems. So, the space shuttle continued to divert resources away from research throughout. But it's okay, because the budget has been cut since it was retired.

          Of course, once in orbit you can go pretty much anywhere, as the Voyager probes have amply demonstrated. But it's a matter of diminishing returns for various reasons: firstly, it takes a very long time to get anywhere; secondly, even when you do get somewhere, Shannon's law and power supplies severely limit how much research can be done and how much data can be communicated; thirdly, space is a very hostile environment viz. the number of failed launches or deployments (Venus and Mars have been particularly cruel). The last is one of the reasons why older but more reliable computer hardware is used. Missions routinely launch with technology which was outdated at launch, but can reasonably be expected to still be working at the end of the mission. I remember hardware from the early 1990s and it was not particularly fast. We all have mobile phones with more oomph.

          So, given everything stacked against it, I think space exploration continues to make extraordinary strides. Rosetta, this probe and, Spirt, Opportunity and Curiosity continue to impress.

          1. Nigel 11

            Re: This is proper engineering

            Proper engineering but with silly political constraints.

            We've known how to assemble a nuclear reactor (U235 fuel, unshielded) in orbit and how to build ion thrusters for quite a while. Unfortunately the anti-nuke lobby are so strong, they won't let us do that, even though the vehicle wouldn't become significantly radioactive until after it had left Earth orbit, never to return.

            1. MyffyW Silver badge
              Happy

              Re: This is proper engineering

              @Nigel_11 sounds like fun. Better yet, have a Project Orion ship, albeit outside of the magnetosphere, and you could holiday on Saturn. Probably.

        4. keithpeter Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: This is proper engineering

          "Well I wasn't around then, but in hindsight if I had been and seen how quickly things moved from "first artificial satellite" to "first man in space" to "first man on the Moon" I certainly would have thought we'd be doing bigger and better stuff than flying by Pluto and landing on a comet 46 years after Armstrong..."

          Born around the time of Sputnik. I was taken to see 2001 when it came out and I can remember working out how old I would be and thinking it would be fairly OK to be on that space station.

          The major thing noone had any idea about was the impact of mobile computing and a ubiquitous world-wide distributed network. Dick Tracy had his watchphone but it was essentially two-way communication. Star Trek people had their communicators but again basically walkie-talkies with sensors. Floyd phones home from a videophone kiosk.

          Pint icon: congratulations to the team who ran this especially for the detailed anticipation of possible faults.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: This is proper engineering

        "Who would have thought back in the 60's that we would be landing an a comet (thanks EU!!!) and flying past Pluto?"

        Not to denigrate the amazing achievements and engineering, but back in the 60's we expected to have a permanent moon-base long before now, maybe even a colony on Mars. Rocket science is much harder than most of thought back then!

  2. ian 22
    Headmaster

    Your wording pains me

    No. Mariner is not and was not a "satellite" unless you consider it a satellite of Sagittarius A*.

  3. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

    BIOS me OS Scotty

    > As a point of history, New Horizons will be making its closest fly-by 50 years to the day after Mariner 4 became the first man made satellite to fly past Mars. During its brief visit to Pluto, New Horizons will collect 5,000 times as much data as the earlier probe to aid our understanding of the mysterious dwarf planet.

    If.

    Let's hope the sunny hack (https://weatherlawyer.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/the-end-of-an-odd-spell/) wasn't Sony hacked. I remember buying a pile of Sony CDs from a car boot just before throwing my computer away around about... no it couldn't have been that long ago, could it?

  4. Chairo

    Good they found this now

    wouldn't want to see this kind of data loss happening during or after the flyby.

    (fingers crossed)

  5. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    "1202 Alarm"

    Processor overload.

    Coders were better back in the day of ropes and cores. No need to reboot.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
      1. AbelSoul
        Thumb Up

        Re: Public Service Broadcasting, Go!

        Love that track.

        PSB aren't too shabby live either.

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: Public Service Broadcasting, Go!

          @AbelSoul From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station or Pluto for that matter.

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: "1202 Alarm"

      To be fair, on the Apollo missions, there was a human sat right beside the computer who could take over. Also, the tech support was only a second or two radio lag away.

      On these robotic missions, the humans are millions of miles away with a round-trip time of almost a day between tech support and the machine.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: "1202 Alarm"

        "a round-trip time of almost a day"

        Round trip time is currently ~9 hours, so longer than a working day but less than a clock day.

        Sorry for the pedantry, but this is Rocket Science!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "1202 Alarm"

        "...almost a day between tech support and the machine."

        By today's tech support ticket standards, that's pretty quick. LOL.

  6. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Coat

    For a moment...

    I thought it might be one of those pesky AE-35 units. Very unreliable.

    Mine's the spacesuit but I seem to have forgotten my helmet.

  7. Paul Crawford Silver badge
    Pint

    Better with a watchdog though

    Even though it caused an upsetting event here by being a touch too sensitive, it is still much better than Clementine's computer that lacked a watchdog and paid for that blunder in a serious loss of science after it got into trouble and wasted its fuel:

    http://www.ganssle.com/watchdogs.htm

    A nice beer for the folks looking after the probe

  8. Christian Legg

    and 40 years to the day...

    ...since the Apollo/Soyuz joint mission.

  9. Anonymous Custard
    Trollface

    Slam code

    Anyone else think that having a contingency plan involving pushing out a "Slam Code" to a probe doing a fly-by is just asking for a misunderstanding or is tempting fate...?

    Still heavy kudos and pints to all involved. Another in a series of good jobs for the probe, rover and satellite mob.

    1. Graham Marsden
      Coat

      Re: Slam code

      Well they might find their phone service switched to another provider without their knowledge and end up with a massive bill...

  10. Simon Harris

    Deadline detector.

    There's one built into every CPU to ensure things go a bit screwy just before the critical phase of any project.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Deadline detector.

      I thought that feature was only normally enabled on printer CPUs. Did NASA get HP to write their drivers?

      1. dotdavid

        Re: Deadline detector.

        "Did NASA get HP to write their drivers?"

        I doubt the 250GB HDD on the probe would have been sufficient.

  11. Arachnoid

    Steady lads

    Hoist the mainsail and batten down the hatches!!

  12. Your alien overlord - fear me
    Alien

    What about the data it would have collected from those alien spaceships heading towards Earth, currently they're about 9 million miles past Pluto and heading this way, probably get here next July 4th :-)

  13. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I'll never wrap my head around the maths...

    Let alone the level of skill required to manage such marvels.

    Steely eyed missile-men/women, each and all.

  14. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. cray74

      "the data connection will be boosted as much as possible beyond its standard 1Kbps transfer rate to feed back the enormous amount of information harvested. It will take over a year to send it all back"

      I thought it was 45 to 90 days. Are they having New Horizons re-send the data several times?

      1. The last doughnut

        Send the data multiple times

        That's not a bad idea really. Assuming the probe has sufficient storage and the transmit power to keep sending it. Until everything received with no errors after decoding. Then I assume they will make it sleep a while until there is more science to do further out.

      2. Steve Cooper

        Well it mentions 128GB storage, and

        (128 gigabytes) / (1 kbps) = 32.449295 years

        1. cray74

          "Well it mentions 128GB storage, and (128 gigabytes) / (1 kbps) = 32.449295 years"

          I believe total science data is going to be 8GB, but that's still 2 years. Alright, potentially a bit more than 45 to 90 days. Maybe that's the "cool public interest data" phase.

        2. wdmot

          Gigabits

          Well it mentions 128GB storage, and

          (128 gigabytes) / (1 kbps) = 32.449295 years

          It mentions 128Gbit storage -- you're off by a factor of 8, so about 4 years to send the whole memory. So it seems they have about 32Gbit of data to send after the flyby.

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Joke

        "I thought it was 45 to 90 days. Are they having New Horizons re-send the data several times?"

        No, they're using xon/xoff hand-shaking. The cable was too long and needed too many repeaters to use RTS/CTS.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Malcolm's maleficent mauled-band

    "the data connection will be boosted as much as possible beyond its standard 1Kbps transfer rate to feed back the enormous amount of information harvested. It will take over a year to send it all back"

    Now there's a standard even the LNP would be satisfied with.

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