New Horizons In Safe Mode – But Improving
New Horizons Spacecraft In Safe Mode
“The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of July 4 that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy. “
New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations
“NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.”
NASA Media Call: New Horizons Mission Plans Following Spacecraft Anomaly
“NASA will host a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT today to discuss the New Horizons spacecraft returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly.”
Uploading new software, while compressing existing data – while taking science observations – was more than NH processor could handle
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) July 6, 2015
Given the radio travel time-around 10 hours round trip-any sort of safing now when the machine is so close to Pluto/Charon is a potential nightmare- New Horizons, sailing past Pluto, the computers all safe, and sound, sensors off…but safe.
The team must be going crazy.
Actually, they already solved the problem.
I believe that during the Pluto-Charon flyby, the spacecraft will be reconfigured to prioritize taking data over going into safe mode to avoid this nightmare scenario.
Thanks, Mr. C. Makes sense.
Usually for critical times like that, they change the safing methodology where either it’s disabled or only for a serious problem such as multiple equipment failure.
“Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille!”
Curious. Are you not suppose to check the new command sequences with the same tests as the spacecraft performs, before you upload the sequence? Especially when you have nine years between launch and the start of the most important sequence of the mission.
Should be able to recover from the safe mode in time. The question is what type of failure board investigation they will conduct after closest approach.
What it sounds like is that they attempted to perform more housekeeping actions than the spacecraft processor was able to handle AND collect data.
That’s not a spacecraft problem, that’s a planning problem.
Somewhere I think I heard Dr. Stern quoted as ‘having too many windows open’ 🙂
So, the didn’t test like they fly, and fly like they test.
So, then what’s the purpose of the tests? Make sure the parts work, but not the whole?
It’s impossible to think everything that could possibly go wrong on a flight, so that means it’s impossible to test for everything that could possibly go wrong.
A lot of this sort of thing tends to come down to what gse (ground support equipment) you have. There are a lot of things that are timing critical on spacecraft, and while new commands are usually (always!) tested on the ground, there are often several types of test platforms ranging from software simulators to full-up copies of the flight hardware. But it’s never exactly the same, since the flight hardware sitting in a lab on earth still has differences from the equipment in flight (for example your star trackers don’t see actual sky, so they tend to be simulated, and your gyros don’t have real signals, so they are simulated too). The degree of sophistication of all that stuff tends to be funding limited.