NASA Deftly Side-steps The Pesky D365 Problem
Posted on November 6, 2006
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Cheeky NASA bastards, cleverly hacking their way around the “new year” computer glitch the rest of us have to suffer through each year:
The space shuttle’s computer software is about 30 years old and does not recognise when the calendar year switches. On 1 January 2007, for example, it will think it is day 366 of 2006 – a problem NASA calls ‘year-end rollover’.
To reset the time, the shuttle’s main computers would have to be ‘reinitialised’, which would mean a period without navigation updates or vehicle control, a situation NASA obviously wants to avoid.
Obviously no one could have predicted the end of the year back in 1977 when NASA first started writing its shuttle software. To be that smart you’d need to amass a collection of the world’s smartest people, like engineers and rocket scientists and stuff. Probably even need a computer.
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