<story><title>Software Update Destroys $286M Japanese Satellite</title><url>http://hackaday.com/2016/05/02/software-update-destroys-286-million-japanese-satellite/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>walrus01</author><text>I know this was a science and LEO (low earth orbit) satellite, but here&amp;#x27;s something to consider when thinking about the difficulties of engineering hardware &amp;amp; software to work together in a satellite.&lt;p&gt;Geostationary telecom (and weather, and SIGINT, etc) satellites: In the entire history of manned spaceflight no human has ever visited geostationary orbit. Once placed in a geostationary transfer orbit (about 450 x 36,000 km) and then onwards to final geostationary orbit, nobody will ever see a satellite again. The largest ones weigh 6000 kilograms and are the size of greyhound buses. They&amp;#x27;re out there right now operating with multiply-redundant everything and cost $150 million to build and launch. It is highly unlikely that any time in the next 25 years any human will ever visit one in person or touch one. When a satellite is encapsulated in its fairing&amp;#x2F;shroud for launch that is the last time anyone will ever see it until its ultimate end of life in hopefully 15 years. Every one of its control systems needs to be so thoroughly debugged and multiply redundant that it can operate out there with absolutely zero chance of repair or parts replacement.</text></comment>
<story><title>Software Update Destroys $286M Japanese Satellite</title><url>http://hackaday.com/2016/05/02/software-update-destroys-286-million-japanese-satellite/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ams6110</author><text>A certain well-known electric car maker (maybe all of them, though) can push software updates to systems that have lives in their control not to mention costly machines. A sobering reminder of the need for very careful testing and control over this sort of thing.</text></comment>