lobsters score: 9 · tags: compsci, debugging
This looks like a slopified version of https://www.rapitasystems.com/blog/what-really-happened-software-mars-pathfinder-spacecraft from 2013, which in turn is a summary of earlier papers.
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Indeed, nice find! I was already surprised about the high volume of articles on nerdyelectronics.com.
@pushcx, wouldn’t it be a good solution to simply change the URL?
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I’d be interested to hear how the update was actually put in place. They must have an OTA update mechanism which sounds super interesting.
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Don’t know about this one specifically, but from hearing about spacecraft updates in general… there is generally a ‘safe mode’ that gets rebooted into when unknown faults happen (such as a watchdog timing out), and which does almost nothing besides talk to home (by the most reliable and slowest method possible), do hardware diagnostics, and keep the thing from freezing. And, naturally, accept firmware updates.
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