What on Mars is happening?
I was reading some technical book today and encountered this interesting anecdote.
The Mars Pathfinder landed on Martian surface July 4 1997, followed by expeditions by Sojourner rover. But it soon experienced several software resets. Each reset delayed the work by one day. And the scientists from JPL had to debug and patch the system remotely from Earth!
Here is a nice powerpoint from Harvard University by Matt Welsh nicely describes the dramatic incident.
Lessons:
● Automatically reset system to “known good” state if things run amuck (Far better than hanging or crashing)
● Ability to trace execution of complex multithreaded code is useful (provide debug mode)
● Think through all possible thread interactions carefully!!
The complete story can be find at Microsoft website.
Comments
If I'm not mistaken, you are the president of the Photography Club? I am very interested in participating, but the website is down and the clubs office couldn't give me any information. Please email me with info! Thanks.
(and btw, nice site)
Posted by: Carvey Hor | October 10, 2006 09:16 PM