|
Ariane Flight V88
Ariane flight V88 was the failed maiden flight of the Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket, vehicle no. 501, on 4 June 1996. It carried the Cluster spacecraft, a constellation of four European Space Agency research satellites. The launch ended in failure due to multiple errors in the software design: dead code, intended only for Ariane 4, with inadequate protection against integer overflow led to an exception handled inappropriately, halting the whole otherwise unaffected inertial navigation system. This caused the rocket to veer off its flight path 37 seconds after launch, beginning to disintegrate under high aerodynamic forces, and finally self-destructing via its automated flight termination system. The failure has become known as one of the most infamous and expensive software bugs in history. The failure resulted in a loss of more than US$370 million. Launch failure The Ariane 5 reused the code from the inertial reference platform from the Ariane 4, but the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cluster II (spacecraft)
Cluster II was a space mission of the European Space Agency, with NASA participation, to study the Earth's magnetosphere over the course of nearly two solar cycles. The mission was composed of four identical spacecraft flying in a Tetrahedron, tetrahedral formation. As a replacement for the original Cluster (spacecraft), Cluster spacecraft which were lost in a launch failure in 1996, the four Cluster II spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs in July and August 2000 onboard two Soyuz-Fregat rockets from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. In February 2011, Cluster II celebrated 10 years of successful scientific operations in space. In February 2021, Cluster II celebrated 20 years of successful scientific operations in space. , its mission was extended until September 2024. The China National Space Administration/ESA Double Star mission operated alongside Cluster II from 2004 to 2007. The first of the satellites of Cluster II to re-enter the atmosphere did so on 8 September 2024. The rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Bug
A software bug is a design defect ( bug) in computer software. A computer program with many or serious bugs may be described as ''buggy''. The effects of a software bug range from minor (such as a misspelled word in the user interface) to severe (such as frequent crashing). In 2002, a study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that "software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product". Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to detect or auto-correct various software errors during operations. History Terminology ''Mistake metamorphism'' (from Greek ''meta'' = "change", ''morph'' = "form") refers to the evolution of a defect in the final stage of software deployment. Transformation of a ''mistake'' committed by an analyst in the early stages of the softw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vulcain (rocket Engine)
Vulcain is a family of European first stage rocket engines for Ariane 5 and Ariane 6. Its development began in 1988 and the first flight was completed in 1996. The updated version of the engine, Vulcain 2, was first successfully flown in 2005. Both members of the family use liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen cryogenic fuel. The new version for Ariane 6 is called Vulcain 2.1. History The Vulcain rocket engine is named in French for Vulcan, the ancient Roman god of fire. Its development, carried out by a European partnership, began in 1988 with the Ariane 5 rocket program. It first flew in 1996 powering the ill-fated flight 501 without being the cause of the disaster, and had its first successful flight in 1997 (flight 502). In 2002 the upgraded Vulcain 2 with 20% more thrust first flew on flight 157, although a problem with the engine turned the flight into a failure. The cause was due to flight loads being much higher than expected, as the inquiry board concluded. Subsequentl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dual Modular Redundancy
In reliability engineering, dual modular redundancy (DMR) is when components of a system are duplicated, providing redundancy in case one should fail. It is particularly applied to systems where the duplicated components work in parallel, particularly in fault-tolerant computer systems. A typical example is a complex computer system which has duplicated nodes, so that should one node fail, another is ready to carry on its work. DMR provides robustness to the failure of one component, and error detection in case instruments or computers that should give the same result give different results, but does not provide error correction In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunications, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communi ..., as ''which'' component is correct and which is malfunctioning cannot be automatically determined. Ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardware Exception
In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an exception breaks the normal flow of execution and executes a pre-registered ''exception handler''; the details of how this is done depend on whether it is a hardware or software exception and how the software exception is implemented. Exceptions are defined by different layers of a computer system, and the typical layers are CPU-defined interrupts, operating system (OS)-defined signals, programming language-defined exceptions. Each layer requires different ways of exception handling although they may be interrelated, e.g. a CPU interrupt could be turned into an OS signal. Some exceptions, especially hardware ones, may be handled so gracefully that execution can resume where it was interrupted. Definition The definition of an excepti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arithmetic Overflow
In computer programming, an integer overflow occurs when an arithmetic operation on integers attempts to create a numeric value that is outside of the range that can be represented with a given number of digits – either higher than the maximum or lower than the minimum representable value. The most common result of an overflow is that the least significant representable digits of the result are stored; the result is said to ''wrap'' around the maximum (i.e. modulo a power of the radix, usually two in modern computers, but sometimes ten or other number). On some processors like graphics processing units (GPUs) and digital signal processors (DSPs) which support saturation arithmetic, overflowed results would be ''clamped'', i.e. set to the minimum value in the representable range if the result is below the minimum and set to the maximum value in the representable range if the result is above the maximum, rather than wrapped around. An overflow condition may give results lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integer (computer Science)
In computer science, an integer is a datum of integral data type, a data type that represents some interval (mathematics), range of mathematical integers. Integral data types may be of different sizes and may or may not be allowed to contain negative values. Integers are commonly represented in a computer as a group of binary digits (bits). The size of the grouping varies so the set of integer sizes available varies between different types of computers. Computer hardware nearly always provides a way to represent a processor word size, register or memory address as an integer. Value and representation The ''value'' of an item with an integral type is the mathematical integer that it corresponds to. Integral types may be ''unsigned'' (capable of representing only non-negative integers) or ''signed'' (capable of representing negative integers as well). An integer value is typically specified in the source code of a program as a sequence of digits optionally prefixed with + or −. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signedness
In computing, signedness is a property of data types representing numbers in computer programs. A numeric variable is ''signed'' if it can represent both positive and negative numbers, and ''unsigned'' if it can only represent non-negative numbers (zero or positive numbers). As ''signed'' numbers can represent negative numbers, they lose a range of positive numbers that can only be represented with ''unsigned'' numbers of the same size (in bits) because roughly half the possible values are non-positive values, whereas the respective unsigned type can dedicate all the possible values to the positive number range. For example, a two's complement signed 16-bit integer An integer is the number zero (0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number (−1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative in ... can hold the values −32768 to 32767 inclusively, while an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integer (computer Science)
In computer science, an integer is a datum of integral data type, a data type that represents some interval (mathematics), range of mathematical integers. Integral data types may be of different sizes and may or may not be allowed to contain negative values. Integers are commonly represented in a computer as a group of binary digits (bits). The size of the grouping varies so the set of integer sizes available varies between different types of computers. Computer hardware nearly always provides a way to represent a processor word size, register or memory address as an integer. Value and representation The ''value'' of an item with an integral type is the mathematical integer that it corresponds to. Integral types may be ''unsigned'' (capable of representing only non-negative integers) or ''signed'' (capable of representing negative integers as well). An integer value is typically specified in the source code of a program as a sequence of digits optionally prefixed with + or −. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Point
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form are called floating-point numbers. For example, the number 2469/200 is a floating-point number in base ten with five digits: 2469/200 = 12.345 = \! \underbrace_\text \! \times \! \underbrace_\text\!\!\!\!\!\!\!\overbrace^ However, 7716/625 = 12.3456 is not a floating-point number in base ten with five digits—it needs six digits. The nearest floating-point number with only five digits is 12.346. And 1/3 = 0.3333… is not a floating-point number in base ten with any finite number of digits. In practice, most floating-point systems use base two, though base ten (decimal floating point) is also common. Floating-point arithmetic operations, such as addition and division, approximate the corresponding real number arithmetic operations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double-precision Floating-point Format
Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Double precision may be chosen when the range or precision of single precision would be insufficient. In the IEEE 754 standard, the 64-bit base-2 format is officially referred to as binary64; it was called double in IEEE 754-1985. IEEE 754 specifies additional floating-point formats, including 32-bit base-2 ''single precision'' and, more recently, base-10 representations (decimal floating point). One of the first programming languages to provide floating-point data types was Fortran. Before the widespread adoption of IEEE 754-1985, the representation and properties of floating-point data types depended on the computer manufacturer and computer model, and upon decisions made by programming-language implementers. E.g., GW-BASIC's double-precision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Reuse
Code reuse is the practice of using existing source code to develop software instead of writing new code. ''Software reuse'' is a broader term that implies using any existing software asset to develop software instead of developing it again. An asset that is relatively easy to reuse and offers significant value is considered to have high reusability. Code reuse may be achieved different ways depending on a complexity of a programming language chosen and range from a lower-level approaches like code copy-pasting (e.g. via snippets), simple functions ( procedures or subroutines) or a bunch of objects or functions organized into modules (e.g. libraries) or custom namespaces, and packages, frameworks or software suites in higher-levels. Code reuse implies dependencies which can make code maintainability harder. At least one study found that code reuse at the class level reduces technical debt. Overview Ad hoc code reuse has been practiced from the earliest days of program ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
