Software glitch dogs international space station project

A BUG in software designed to unfurl the solar panels on the international space station has caused a delay in the project.

The holely software has caused the panels to open in a bizarre and unusual way, or not at all the way NASA requested on the original spec.

The software was supposed to issue commands to a ferris-wheel-like rotating joint which will allow the solar arrays to move with the sun to maximise the amount of power generated.

However, when NASA tried issuing commands to the joint overnight it started to do its own thing. Apparently the programmers were hauled into the office for an all night session of coding to get the thing working again.

NASA has a problem in that it uses a lot of old code and operating systems in a bid to save cash. It is not clear if this was because it was trying to run an old version of software or just bad coding.

More at the Seattle Post Intelligencer . µ