I kid, I kid, they would never let Chris anywhere near sensitive government software projects, or would they….?

Anyways apparently one of the satellites we sent to Mars, the Mars Global Surveyor, has been lost due to a software programming error. Here’s a quote from Nasa’s John McNamee:

“We think that the failure was due to a software load we sent up in June of last year. This software tried to synch up two flight processors. Two addresses were incorrect - two memory addresses were over written. As the geometry evolved, we drove the [solar] arrays against a hard stop and the spacecraft went into safe mode. The radiator for the battery pointed at the sun, the temperature went up, and battery failed. But this should be treated as preliminary.”

Tsk tsk tsk. What’s the moral of this story? What do you do with software before you upload it to a crazy expensive spacecraft orbiting an alien world? Test! Test! Test!

Read the full story at SpaceRef