NuSTAR Launch Delayed Due to Launch Vehicle Issues
Launch of NASA’s NuSTAR Mission Postponed Due to Launch Vehicle Software Issues
“The planned launch of NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission has been postponed after a March 15 launch status meeting. The launch will be rescheduled to allow additional time to confirm the flight software used by the launch vehicle’s flight computer will issue commands to the rocket as intended. The spacecraft will lift off on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket, which will be released from an aircraft taking off from the Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.”
I wish they would give a little more context to announcements like this. Pegasus launch vehicle has been launched many ties before. Does this mean that NASA was just lucky nothing went wrong? Or is it that there is new flight controller computer hardware that requires the new software? I could and do understand this with a new vehicle like Falcon 9/Dragon but not with a flight proven launcher like Pegasus. Don’t they use version control for their software? Just go back to the version of software that was certified.
Well, the Taurus
Looks for other articles around the net. They confirm that it is a new computer and new software. Can’t go back to an old rev…
There’s no indication in the story that there is any actual problem in the software or any significant change from the previous version. It sounds like the delay was for a NASA “review”. If NASA wants high-resolution control of missions like this it perhaps should integrate its assossors more closely so an entirely separate assessment isn’t needed.
Yes. Its harder to do oversight though in a continuous participation manner, as well as harder to budget for the involvement – it increases certain costs that Congress is trying to optimize out.
A last minute one shot “review” might sell well as a better intervention in this political environment, irrespective of its actual effectiveness.
If you have sat through as many such reviews as I have, how effective do you really think they are? It takes a lot of work for the contractor to prepare the presentation, the government people and their support contractors have little chance of really detecting problems unless they are pointed out by the developers, and yet they feel obligated to nit-pick to show they are doing their job. If a change is made, it may or may not make the system safer but it almost always increases weight and cost.
Been through both kinds of these.
You’re talking about a more common case and I agree these don’t get more than a few items that don’t sit right, and you wonder if it was worth it given those items would probably be found anyways – so I understand it.
But there have been some exceptions, where we had to move faster than our contractors, where it was new territory for all, and we caught dozens of issues, and they caught us on a few as well. This is how it is supposed to function. But in this case, it was a unique situation where we were all in each others laps 7×24 for three weeks, and each needed the other because it was the only critical review that was going to happen. And we’d worked together before many times so it wasn’t a big deal.
In this case it was the developers, their critics, and those “customers” of the science product that made the mission happen, because it was too easy to screw it up as others had in this case before. No one wanted a miss.
New hardware and software for the Pegasus are the reason for the review. The assessors are integrated closely and the review is not a presentation but engineers looking at data.
Also the 5 sounding rocket to make pretty lights in the sky was postponed.Another NASA repetitive mission.What new things will be checked this time?Or is this a mission for students?They sent these up over Fl. back in the ’60’s.I was stationed at Eglin at that time and when one would go up at 0300 on an island a few miles away,I was startled to say the least.
What was wrong with the old software and old hardware?
If the changes are so significant, why is a one of a kind payload being launched on the first flight of the new configuration?