Dies führte dazu, dass der Satellit kurz nach dem Start in einen „kalten Zustand“ mit geringer Leistung und ohne Lagekontrolle überging, was dem Bericht zufolge zu einem völligen Kommunikationsverlust mit den Bodenteams führte. Dies führte zusammen mit „vielen fehlerhaften Fehlermanagementmaßnahmen an Bord“ letztendlich zum Scheitern von Lunar Trailblazer.
https://gizmodo.com/the-stupidest-glitch-imaginable-killed-a-72-million-lunar-mission-in-a-single-day-2000728962
14 Kommentare
Skipped out on the testing phase it seems. Besides that, wouldn’t it make sense to have a small solar panel or two on opposite sides for minimum backup power, in case the craft starts spinning or temporarily has them aimed in the wrong direction? So much can go wrong, a little redundancy goes a long way.
$72 million is a lot of money for us, but not a lot for a space mission. I wonder what the additional cost would have been to do a full integration tests for systems such as the solar panels, to catch issues like this.
At least they didn’t mix up Newtons and Pound-seconds.
I’m a bit surprised that if it went dead it didn’t eventually end up getting some sunlight and reboot into a state that they could communicate and fix it.
Budget:
Hardware: 71MM
Software: 1MM
Software testing and validation: unpaid intern given a pop tart and 30min
Two-sided solar panels would have solved the problem. Or the films that can be used on windows that absorb light in both directions.
lol “glitch”. It’s an error. Either human error or they used Ai to proof read it and it has no idea that 180° is specially incorrect.
_no attitude control_.
Developer: Hey Trailblazer, set attitude to 10%.
Trailblazer: 100% it is, geek.
Who wants to take bets that the testing involved some „vibe coding“
Why they don’t just Alt + F12 and turn on infinite electricity are they stupid?
This sounds more like the panels were installed backwards.
no backup? and no failsaves?
one system goes bad and the whole thing is doomed?
This is actually very easy to overlook. It could be a simple a minus sign that isn’t displayed or nm absolute value used in the software. During the testing, which is usually done in simulation, it may not even show up. Simulations are only as good as the models created. Testing on the actual hardware is difficult to do for large satellites. They could have build a physical model and maybe caught this one.
This is why ee build inexepensive satellites. You aren’t losing a lot of money if something goes horribly wrong.
Literally a 1 vs a -1 in a rotation matrix somewhere.