This talk about off-the-shelf hardware in space makes me wonder, given the clear line of sight, if it would be possible to detect their Wi-Fi access points' beacons from Earth. I'm not a "radio guy" and don't know if this would be impossible, simply on the basis of physics, due to the presumably low radiated power from the APs and the limitations of the size of typical antennas on the ground. (Obviously it's possible with the right equipment. We can communicate with the Voyager probes, but that's not with a "can-tenna" and an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi card...)
Edit: Anybody know how difficult it would be to keep an antenna pointed at them? I have no intuition for how fast their transit would be. I assume, since an orbit is around 90 minutes, pretty damned fast.
Edit 2: Some search-engining and back-of-the-envelope not-very-good-at-trig math says the longest possible transit would be about 5 minutes, moving though about 40 degrees of arc / minute. I'm probably completely talking out my ass, though.
It feels like it would be do-able to keep a directional antenna trained on a target moving at that speed.
Probably not possible. Their Wi-Fi access point is inside the capsule, the capsule is made from metal and probably shielding the signal somewhat. Maybe even quite a lot if it's intended to provide some radiation shielding. Also it's low power as it only needs to work inside the capsule, at the given distances signal attenuation will make it almost impossible to pick up anything.
Ham radio enthusiasts might be able to help you out here.
Hams already talk to the ISS on the 144-148 MHz band (which is close to the FM radio in your car). They have about a 15 minute window to talk to the ISS. They have a 90 minute orbit, too, so I would bet similar window to talk as Artemis II.
The ISS is much closer to the earth than Artemis. Quick google tells me the Artemis is 184 times the distance as the ISS (dang!), bit inside the Van Allen belt.
Our atmosphere is transparent to 2.4 Ghz, so there probably won't be too much attenuation. You would need to account for scattering of the signal - maybe use a yagi directional antenna?
In conclusion: I bet you could interfere with their wifi, but might not be able to hear their signal
My HT radio has a mode (I've never tried) for talking to satellites. It uses the GPS to get the radio location, and then manages doppler shift for the frequency as it's coming toward or going away from you. So you'd likely need something in your WiFi connection to Artemis/Integrity to deal with that.
Seems unlikely. Even at perigee, a long boom YAGI 20 degree spread would be ca. 40 km wide. Mind you, the signal would still be 5 million times stronger than when Artemis II is close to the moon.
We can keep our amateur radio antennas pointed at the ISS for their entire pass. This would be harder but feels doable. We have directional wifi antennas on AZ/EL rotators to track drones and extend their range.
Everyone likes to point and laugh, sure, I'm getting a chuckle as well.
However, on more practical level, what are other options? Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies, is pretty low bandwidth and very familiar to end users.
IMAP with Thunderbird is probably only other option that would satisfy the requirements.
EDIT: Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.
Email is a pretty good way to send short text messages, but it's not great at sending files. The basic protocols are pretty simple and we've got a lot of experience using them. I can see the appeal of email.
There's no way that outlook is the best tool for the job though, and it's no surprise at all that they're having problems with it. It's a complete mess with insane amounts of overhead and bloat if all you want to do is send text. Even the message headers it sends/mangles are trash. It's a pain to work with on the end user side too. I can't imagine that they couldn't have written a basic email client that would do the job better with far fewer problems/resources or used/built off of any number of decades old open source projects.
This comment is downvoted, but it is correct. Emailing a file takes roughly 30% more bandwidth than a file transfer protocol (any such protocol, not necessarily FTP) due to mime encoding.
I don't know why people are surprised by this. Using suitable off-the-shelf solutions for non-mission-critical purposes seems like a very reasonable thing to do.
I'm recalling this from my memory of "The Space Above Us" podcast: There were various bespoke teleprinters sent up on early shuttle flights that had exciting failure modes (if I remember correctly one of them started smoking) and in at least a couple of cases they had to stow the new hardware and pull out the old backup hardware because the new stuff didn't work.
> Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.
To me that's probably much more interesting. We assume they have all this fancy NASA tech, probably some special communication protocols, but nope, email is fine. Still not sure why they'd use Outlook, but I guess it's easier than retraining astronauts on Alpine or Mutt.
How long did the US military rely on mIRC... decades, maybe they still do?
> The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed.
This quote is completely and totally irrelevant. Nobody is saying they should code a new Outlook. If they did code something, it would be significantly smaller in scope and rigorously tested like spacebound programs in the past were. "New space-engineering-grade code created with actual engineering practices" is absolutely going to be more reliable than "old bloated commercial shitware". But I guess software engineering is a lost art, so it can't be helped.
It's also going to take a hell of a lot longer and cost more than buying an Outlook license. If I was lead on that project, you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that spending $100k+ on an email solution unless you can point to specific, serious deficiencies in the existing off the shelf solutions.
Software Engineering is far from a lost art: part of the practice is intelligently making cost-benefit decisions.
The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.
And if you are going with some local server, the Exchange/Outlook family is just the worst possible option. Those people already have enough stuff to maintain up there, they don't need something that require in-house expert admins.
mu4e in Emacs works well, or Notmuch, or even Gnus with a local Maildir. Or Mutt if you're more into that. None of these applications can be that much harder than flying the capsule can they?
Yeah, the only other option I’d consider for this would be Apple Mail on an iPad for the same reason that it works well offline or with low bandwidth networks. There’s a QA issue here but the logic is quite reasonable.
Apple Mail does not play nicely with Outlook/Exchange/M365 accounts. Everywhere I've worked had said "You can use Apple Mail if you want, but IT won't be supporting it. Outlook app only." Always issues with syncing mail or contacts.
Outlook is notoriously difficult to interface with. The only real success story I'd ever seen was some Thunderbird extension. I think it was called Owl. I had the company pay for it, but I think that it wasn't very expensive. It synced contacts and calendar too.
I'd have just set up a backup mail client if someone insisted on Outlook. These sorts of issues are very common, and having a backup is the textbook solution if something might go wrong.
Email(smtp) is not a bad choice for messaging in space(or anywhere really) it is a well understood robust protocol designed in a time when all networks were slow and intermittent. Exactly what you need in space.
IMAP probably not so much, It depends too much on having a good network. unless the imap server is on the spaceship(heh, spaceSHIP, that is an optimistic term, but it is all we have, so going with it), I would not expect it to work all that well.
I am not very familiar with outlooks game, Historically my beef with with it and thunderbird was their local data store, I mean it was not strictly speaking bad, but I was like "we have this great Maildir spec, why are you using this propriety database that is prone to corruption, even if you don't like Maildir million files approach at least use sqlite"
>Email(smtp) is not a bad choice for messaging in space
Email (Taylor UUCP g protocol) is a better choice for messaging in space. Resuming partial transmission is great! I used it up until ~2010 and it worked really great on some very, very crappy connections (modems, obviously, CDPD, phone tethering in spotty locations, bad WiFi setups)...
> However, on more practical level, what are other options? Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies, is pretty low bandwidth and very familiar to end users.
Claws-mail (https://claws-mail.org) has a good working Windows version. Native desktop app, lightweight, extremely fast, able to handle multigigabyte inboxes for breakfast. The only drawback for some would be that it does not compose (although it can display them just fine) HTML mail, only text-only mail. This is an architectural decision.
I used this for a while. It doesn't display HTML emails just fine. It only supports a subset of stuff which -- as a geek is awesome because it protects me -- but would be hideous to give to a normal user. Literally less than half of my emails were readable.
Are you sure? You used the the Fancy HTML Viewer plugin, which uses WebkitGTK2? I never had any problems with HTML Mail rendering in Claws. Your experience must be clearly peculiar to yourself.
Yeah that is the sad thing. Fewer desktop options these days. And CLI client is OK. Actually for an astronaut probably OK as they are used to learning systems. They'd appreciate reliability.
> Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies
With local cache for an Exchange server, or with purely local mail (i.e., using .pst files). The latter is mediocre IME. Outlook is an Exchange client; other uses are not in its wheelhouse.
I quit Outlook and went to Thunderbird when I upgraded my CPU and Microsoft told me I had to re-purchase Outlook when I had paid for a "lifetime license". That was the last straw for me. I installed Linux and Thunderbird and have not looked back at Windows.
I was on Windows for 30 years. I advocated for it and even got a few CTOs to switch from MacOS to Windows because they saw Windows was actually more capable than Apple propaganda would have you believe.
I'm not really sure how you figure that my comment makes Linux hard to like.
I simply don't like the direction Microsoft is headed in, and haven't for some time. Many people don't like it. Microsoft recently may have had a realization as a company and they might change their current direction, but I still doubt I'll go back. They expected me to pay twice for software that I paid a "lifetime license" for, only because I upgraded the CPU in my computer. If you think that somehow makes Linux look bad, then I don't know man...
I run my email inside a virtual machine, so it was easy for me to switch over from Windows/Outlook to Linux/Thunderbird. I certainly don't expect everyone to switch.
The poor technicians having to RDP with (what I imagine must be) a horrible latency. Although still might be better than some corporate environments lol
The poor technicians having to RDP with (what I imagine must be) a horrible latency.
Once or twice a month, I have to RDP (now "Microsoft Windows App!") into a Windows XP machine on the other side of the continent through a jump box and a dialup connection.
Latency is bad, but not as terrible as you might think. The worst part is moving files between localhost and remote.
RDP in the windows XP days supported all kinds of tricks to work with low bandwidths like doing rendering on the client not the server.
I think most of those tricks have been disabled in modern windows for better security (you don't want some guest user able to feed your not-so-robust awfully complex rendering code some malicious inputs...)
Low bandwidth is a bigger problem than high latency. If it takes half a second or even a second for your clicks to register it's not a big deal, you learn to work around it. But if the bandwidth is so low that it takes 5-10 seconds just to write the screen it really sucks.
I don’t know if this craft has it, but they’ve been announcing all over that we’ll get 4K over a 260mbps link from the moon, so that shouldn’t be a problem
Yup. 57kbps transatlantic modem connection to a remote desktop in some country with poor telephone connectivity was probably even worse. Never want to have to do that again!
Is this actually true? What's next? A BSOD? I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings. Unbeliveable.
You're a couple decades behind the news. Basically every version of Windows since 95 has been on spacecraft carrying humans. The ISS notoriously migrated to Linux after a virus spread across their Windows XP systems.
But these things aren't running the guidance computers -- they're laptops.
> I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings.
Do you also worry when you are flying on an airplane where some other passengers carry a laptop running windows? Just because it is a computer and it is on a spacecraft doesnt mean it will harm human beings if it goes down.
We migrated earlier this year and had a similar problem. Outlook (classic) works differently than the OWA version. They keep the classic version so people don't spontaneously throw a chair out a window. It's being phased out slowly.
It depends on how badly Microsoft continues to fuck up Outlook (classic).
I don't use Outlook for my personal email, but I've used it in various corporate engagements and not been wholly dissatisfied. Newer versions are slower, more bloated, and unstable (though add-ins-- especially the Teams add-in-- contribute to that).
The most egregious regression, for me, has been the "Advanced Find" functionality (which was wonderful in the 97 thru 2010 versions) being changed-out for the god-awful search box within the Outlook window.
We could have said that for publisher a few years back. Its death knell has been sounded and microsoft aren't even offering any way for people to properly view or print their publisher files, let alone edit them.
Which "new" Outlook? I think there's like 3 versions of Outlook currently on the market. The Classic Win32 one they want you to stop using, the new Lite variant bundled for free with Windows 11, and the new Full Spec one that comes with Office 365, both of which are built on web technologies IIRC.
That one that comes with office 365. My work PC got auto updated with it and I switched back to the Win32 version within an hour because it was buggy and a huge resource hog. It's just an email client and calendar, there's no need to keep reinventing the wheel, especially if you're just gonna make it worse.
Its the fucking federal government's policy. Basically it amounts to "pay microsoft as a form of corporate welfare", "permit but not really allow linux", and "this is how it has always been done".
And also because apparently "nobody has ever been fired for choosing Microsoft", which is something that should start happening more often if you ask me
As long as Linux distros have such shit accessibility stories, MacOS and Windows being available should be a requirement for all systems in government.
Please imagine the luxury of being SO FAR AWAY from all the crap happening on our planet right now, only to be spoiled by some lousy marketing emails from Microslop hawking their latest Copilot incursion.
It doesn't seem like they are trying to figure out why two copies of outlook are installed, they're trying to figure out why neither is giving them access to their email.
People opening the "wrong" Outlook has been the norm for the last couple of years. Between "Outlook (classic)", "new" Outlook (rolled out with Office 365 clients), and "Outlook" (rolled out with Windows 11) it's been a shit show for a while now.
Oh ya I remember how some computer pulled a windows update over a satellite connection during a research flight (aircraft). That was super expensive, wow. Now Microsoft servers are banned at the outgoing point since you couldn’t reliably stop it the computer itself and new teams with new computers come in.
I'm not letting Microsoft off the hook here, but if you have an expensive metered connection and you're trusting clients (especially a modern personal computer of any operating system type)to play nicely with bandwidth, that's 100% on you.
That's a really sorry state of things, then. There's zero trust in software now, in the literal sense. How did it get that we live in a world where you can't trust a client to enforce its own documented behavior? How did it get to be the user's fault for not using OS and hardware level measures and not the software vendor's fault when the "Automatic updates" toggle is a no-op?
MBAs/consultants hijacked the industry along with an influx of people that only consider leetcode to be sufficient for hiring. The past 10 years has been a major injunction of these people into big tech. The resulting mess is predictable, it'll get worse too which is why we need to break up these companies and allow better more efficient companies to take their place rather than letting them subsidize their failures with their monopolies.
In an environment where bandwidth utilization costs money I think it's a good belt-and-suspenders approach, regardless of the expected behavior of the clients, to enforce policy at the choke point between expensive and not-expensive.
(I think more networks should be built with default deny egress policies, personally. It would make data exfiltration more difficult, would make ML algorithms monitoring traffic flows have less "noise" to look thru, and would likely encourage some efficiency on the part of dependencies.)
Software design is not really my wheelhouse so I can't comment meaningfully on that, but on the networking side I can very confidently say it was a poor architecture. You simply cannot assume that all of your clients are going to be both 1) non-malicious and 2) work exactly as you think they will.
Link saturation would be one of the first things that would come to mind in this situation, and at these speeds QoS would be trivial even for cheap consumer hardware.
Well, on the software design side, there's plenty of scenarios where undocumented behavior crops up on unexpected network interruption. In the example above, Windows can even pre-download updates on metered connections during one time period, then install those updates during another. The customers really can't take the blame for that, IMO.
I think overall society has rapidly deteriorated in software quality and it is mostly because of the devaluing of software design. No one expects quality from software, everyone "understands there are bugs", and some like to take advantage of that. And so the Overton window gets pushed in the direction of "broken forever good luck holding the bag if you use it" rather than the more realistic "occasionally needs to restart IFF you hit an issue and it takes less than <10 seconds and has minimal data loss".
Fair enough, but the fact is that until fairly recently most software wouldn't even pretend to care about conserving bandwidth. I certainly would never expect a desktop OS to do this well, even if MS loves their revenue-generating "bugs."
> since you couldn’t reliably stop it the computer itself and new teams with new computers come in.
Wifi connection settings in Windows have a "metered connection" setting, which disables automatically downloading updates. I don't recall exactly when this was introduced, but I had to use it for a year while I was stuck on satellite internet. You can even set data caps and such.
Of course, it's always off by default, and I have no idea if there's any way to provision the connection via enterprise admin to default to on for a particular network (I would assume not) so you'd be stuck hoping everyone that comes in does the right thing.
Wasn’t it Bill Gates’ dream that every coffee machine should run Windows? I guess he’s got his wish. Also, redundancy: Imagine going into space and then have no email! Can’t let that happen.
One is hacked by a Russian hacker group based in St. Petersburg, the other is hacked by a Chinese hacker group, and the third instance was actually BackOrifice but it couldn't get enough resources to run because of the other two.
At a previous job I was a developer on a medical instrument that used Windows to run the UI.
Before everyone gets all up in arms about it, Windows/Linux UI & database with external microcontrollers handling real-time control is a very common architectural choice for medical and industrial equipment. To the point where many Systems-on-Module (SoMs) come with a Linux-capable ARM processor and a separate, smaller processor for real-time, linked via shared memory.
Anyway, a customer called to report a weird bug that we couldn't resolve. After remoting into the instrument, we discovered that one of the lab technicians had attempted to install Excel on it. At some point the install must have failed, but it left a .dll behind that was causing a conflict with something in our code and keeping the UI from starting properly.
No, we did not learn anything from this incident...
Isn't this what Embedded Windows was always for, like for use in medical equipment, ATMs, POS, PLC, oscilloscopes, etc? Basically stuff that's supposed to be fire-and-forget, run 24/7 and that the user shouldn't be able to tinker with.
And also what group policies were for, that can disable the user from installing any software?
Am I wrong to assume that the fuckup was on your end, for using the wrong tool and not configuring it properly?
> Am I wrong to assume that the fuckup was on your end, for using the wrong tool and not configuring it properly?
Not at all. I agree that it should have been locked down and only privileged accounts should be allowed software update. But the system auto-booted into an Administrator account so it really wasn't a surprise that eventually someone would do something stupid.
I will say that this was for Windows NT retail, not Windows NT Embedded. At that point, getting an NT Embedded license practically required sacrificing your firstborn child. It was only when Microsoft got to Win XP Embedded that the license didn't look like it was written by a team of lawyers who already knew that they were perpetually in Hell.
Memories now of what we were given at the hospital long ago: our obstetrics ward was using Philips OBTraceVue software. The original FDA-approved system required Philips to package the OS and hardware all together, so we were given a bunch of generic Compaq desktops to run their fetal heartrate monitoring on.
The biggest annoying complaint was "we want to run our EHR software on it!" but because of the FDA requirements, we weren't allowed to install anything on the box. Yet somehow providing AV could be OK in some cases, and in other cases installing Citrix? And then we'd somehow find out someone managed to install the EHR client onto it anyways and it became a big old mess to have to have Philips come send a tech out of their own to reimage a PC we couldn't "legally" service.
It was a big messy pain for a while back in the day. Was happy when we finally got to upgrade to the newer IntelliSpace software on our own PCs in the ward. (Also got to meet a support engineer that came out rocking an Agilent badge, so that was super cool on its own right of history...)
> somehow providing AV could be OK in some cases, and in other cases installing Citrix?
The only way this could possibly have passed FDA scrutiny would be if the original manufacturer had validated this particular system configuration and approved it.
There's probably tons of stuff like this going on all over the place, but it manages to say under the radar, so no one notices it. But with the FDA's increased scrutiny on cybersecurity it will eventually disappear.
Back in like early aughts I remember seeing an ATM in Rome that had evidently crashed and was sitting at a DOS prompt. I was much younger then, but I remember thinking it wasn't terribly surprising, but it was also a bit of a wizard of oz moment.
since the astronauts are asking about it i'm guessing it wasn't snuck onboard. Sneaking stuff on to spacecraft to play with on the moon was a thing, i think one of the Apollo astronauts smuggled a golf club and balls to hit on the moon.
(I realize this mission is to only orbit and not land on the moon)
guys former NASA Mission Control Web Tool Team and OCA here (Orbital Comms Adapter office which was a backroom position)
Crews have been using thinkpad laptops (personal laptops since the 2005) on the ISS and Shuttle. Artemis is likely an extension of this
Laptops go through a long space hardening and verification process. Windows and Outlook is the result of that
We used to do "Mail Syncs" which taking the outlook file and pushing it up to the crews laptop doing a comm window via TDRSS network -that how astronauts got their email
is this high tech - no -does it work and been done for years yes.
1. In the space program decisions are made years before and changes are very difficult owing to a myriad of reasons from procedures to paperwork, eg there was a whole mirror lab setup on the ground
To support them etc
2. Astronauts/Aerospace operationally often come from defense world - they are used to windows - see DoD -that battle was fought in the 80s/90s
3. Once something is a part of the space program it takes on a life of its own/ we had an IIS webserver onboard the ISS for example and also apache tomcat - we (myself wrote software for both) using .NET and Java
4. Training and operational software and docs were all MS Office variety for years (were talking from floppy disk era here)
5. Lot of other linux/unix based systems too this is is just crew support laptops - not considered mission critical
And ultimately they have a lot more important things to be doing then learning a different email client than the one they use at their desk on earth. This is an email client on a laptop, not a navigation system.
Enshittification has reached space. Woohoo! We did it. Just use the web version! Love to know how how the web version loads with a couple of seconds network latency.
I want to say something like "oh well, this is certainly a non-critical piece of software". Hopefully it's the convenient dashboard and there are other, more hardened consoles for fallback or something.
But in all seriousness, and without glibness or sarcasm: I cannot comprehend how there is any "unexpected" software running on that spacecraft, regardless of operating system.
EDIT*** For those who like me only watched the video and didn't read the thread: This is on a laptop that is non-critical, it is not a part of the spacecraft. Whew. Now I'm sad that one of the Linux distros didn't try to pitch themselves to the astronauts for a sponsorship... Would have been especially on brand for Pop_OS.
> The thing about Space is that it's just so huge. Unbelievably so. And the real challenge? You have to make all your delta-V for orbital speed by pushing gas very fast. In one go.
I think we need to mandate intentionally slower, sandboxed, and resource-constrained development environments/containers so developers are unable to abuse resources like they're "free" and in so using wasteful and improper algorithms to expand to fill the volume of the container (RAM, CPU, IOPS, storage capacity, and network bandwidth and latency) like an ideal gas. Lazy coding and excessive abstractions on top of VMs on top of more abstractions all the way down leads to shit.
Main reason is easy availability of developers. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a web developer, whereas try finding one that even knows what LVGL is.
Tons of existing libraries and frameworks. Essentially every UI problem you're likely to have is solved already, there are Known Good ways of dealing with most problems that you'll encounter.
Consistent interface: the primary interaction element is the browser and HTML is the simplest thing there is to generate. You can write a basic webserver in an afternoon.
This comment makes it feel a lot safer, when you think about it.
"Web browsers are historically known for crashing, but that's partly because they have to handle every page on the whole Internet. A static system with the same browser running a single website, heavily tested, may be reliable enough for our needs."
When you've also built up the metal that you're running that React on, it's a lot warmer and cozier than having to trust the whole fat Windows 11 codebase on Artemis...
Why in the name of all that's holy would you use a Microsoft product on a mission like this? Just about the only thing you can trust about MS is that their software is buggy.
Because they have the power to insert themselves in places like these. It's a bigger problem. There are places in which companies with Microslop's level of quality have no business to be, but they're already there.
The fun thing about this, is it can change at anytime for any reason. All we need to do is get the right people in power, a good step toward this direction would be to actually support abolishing big tech (which many primary challengers have as a platform position).
I believe that the use of Windows NT for Aegis control was fleet-wide, so that problem wasn't unique to the Yorktown. That just happened to be where it was discovered.
The US shot down Iran Air 655 using the USS Vincennes, a Ticonderoga class ship. The shootdown was before Windows existed.
It's controversial what to "blame", but I generally blame the captain, who defied all reason and caution to shoot down an aircraft that they never identified. He went gung ho and maybe got tunnel vision but he should have been outright court martialed. That should have been treated as "No, this is not acceptable behavior for someone of the rank of captain even if you hadn't shot down an airliner"
British nuclear subs were running Windows XP until at least 2017. It's easy to google, but the best article about it is No, Trident doesn't run on windows XP (https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-trident-doesnt-run-window...), which ironically makes it very clear that Trident subs were running on Windows XP and had no plans to replace it.
Most UK government excuse: "The programme undertaken by the Royal Navy and BAE Systems to equip the fleet with a Windows-based command system was completed in just 18 days."
Translated: "You couldn't do better in 18 days, so you don't have a right to worry or criticize. Also, don't ask why this was pushed off until the last 18 days of the project."
Huh, back in the 2001/2002 timeframe I worked at an old company that gave everyone a Windows laptop but us engineers also had UNIX accounts on the server cluster, which we logged into for dev work.
Our company was hit with one of the worms (don’t remember which). Thousands of emails constantly coming in and everyone scrambling to delete them - except people like me, who were on vacation. I returned to an inbox that instantly crashed Outlook. IT was trying to find a solution. But I logged into the UNIX cluster, opened Pine, and deleted all the crap, page by page. When I got most of it done, Outlook started working again.
IT was shocked but then told everyone else to go do what I did, eliminating their need to do any work. So I guess you win some and you lose some..
ILOVEYOU was in 2000 and behaved that way. I remember we just shut off our Exchange servers until there was a fix. Email was still new enough that the world didn't implode.
Yeah I get the point, I'm saying it's not really a good point, running Windows and Outlook on a secondary system is fine. Forcing the astronauts to learn to use some other system would be a waste of time and probably worse than whatever it is you see as the problem.
A program which can covertly transmit itself between computers via networks (especially the Internet) or removable storage such as CDs, USB drives, floppy disks, etc., often causing damage to systems and data.
A software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer.
This talk about off-the-shelf hardware in space makes me wonder, given the clear line of sight, if it would be possible to detect their Wi-Fi access points' beacons from Earth. I'm not a "radio guy" and don't know if this would be impossible, simply on the basis of physics, due to the presumably low radiated power from the APs and the limitations of the size of typical antennas on the ground. (Obviously it's possible with the right equipment. We can communicate with the Voyager probes, but that's not with a "can-tenna" and an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi card...)
Edit: Anybody know how difficult it would be to keep an antenna pointed at them? I have no intuition for how fast their transit would be. I assume, since an orbit is around 90 minutes, pretty damned fast.
Edit 2: Some search-engining and back-of-the-envelope not-very-good-at-trig math says the longest possible transit would be about 5 minutes, moving though about 40 degrees of arc / minute. I'm probably completely talking out my ass, though.
It feels like it would be do-able to keep a directional antenna trained on a target moving at that speed.
Taking bets that the access point is called "Free Airport WIFI"
https://www.npr.org/2010/10/09/130451369/the-zombie-network-...
Probably not possible. Their Wi-Fi access point is inside the capsule, the capsule is made from metal and probably shielding the signal somewhat. Maybe even quite a lot if it's intended to provide some radiation shielding. Also it's low power as it only needs to work inside the capsule, at the given distances signal attenuation will make it almost impossible to pick up anything.
The correct answer is far too often the most boring answer.
But yeah, this is basically it. We could detect the signal, but they simply aren't emitting a signal in the right direction for us to detect.
Ham radio enthusiasts might be able to help you out here.
Hams already talk to the ISS on the 144-148 MHz band (which is close to the FM radio in your car). They have about a 15 minute window to talk to the ISS. They have a 90 minute orbit, too, so I would bet similar window to talk as Artemis II.
The ISS is much closer to the earth than Artemis. Quick google tells me the Artemis is 184 times the distance as the ISS (dang!), bit inside the Van Allen belt. Our atmosphere is transparent to 2.4 Ghz, so there probably won't be too much attenuation. You would need to account for scattering of the signal - maybe use a yagi directional antenna?
In conclusion: I bet you could interfere with their wifi, but might not be able to hear their signal
My HT radio has a mode (I've never tried) for talking to satellites. It uses the GPS to get the radio location, and then manages doppler shift for the frequency as it's coming toward or going away from you. So you'd likely need something in your WiFi connection to Artemis/Integrity to deal with that.
> I bet you could interfere with their wifi
Seems unlikely. Even at perigee, a long boom YAGI 20 degree spread would be ca. 40 km wide. Mind you, the signal would still be 5 million times stronger than when Artemis II is close to the moon.
We can keep our amateur radio antennas pointed at the ISS for their entire pass. This would be harder but feels doable. We have directional wifi antennas on AZ/EL rotators to track drones and extend their range.
Everyone likes to point and laugh, sure, I'm getting a chuckle as well.
However, on more practical level, what are other options? Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies, is pretty low bandwidth and very familiar to end users.
IMAP with Thunderbird is probably only other option that would satisfy the requirements.
EDIT: Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.
Email is a pretty good way to send short text messages, but it's not great at sending files. The basic protocols are pretty simple and we've got a lot of experience using them. I can see the appeal of email.
There's no way that outlook is the best tool for the job though, and it's no surprise at all that they're having problems with it. It's a complete mess with insane amounts of overhead and bloat if all you want to do is send text. Even the message headers it sends/mangles are trash. It's a pain to work with on the end user side too. I can't imagine that they couldn't have written a basic email client that would do the job better with far fewer problems/resources or used/built off of any number of decades old open source projects.
This comment is downvoted, but it is correct. Emailing a file takes roughly 30% more bandwidth than a file transfer protocol (any such protocol, not necessarily FTP) due to mime encoding.
I don't know why people are surprised by this. Using suitable off-the-shelf solutions for non-mission-critical purposes seems like a very reasonable thing to do.
I'm recalling this from my memory of "The Space Above Us" podcast: There were various bespoke teleprinters sent up on early shuttle flights that had exciting failure modes (if I remember correctly one of them started smoking) and in at least a couple of cases they had to stow the new hardware and pull out the old backup hardware because the new stuff didn't work.
Related thread from 2023 about the US Navy using Xbox 360 controllers instead of custom built hardware.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408604
Xbox 360 controller: Good times! US Navy approved.
Madcatz controller: Bad times! OceanGate approved.
OceanGate was Logitech not MadCatz
I deeply regret the error; MadCatz would have failed long before.
Gad those things were crap.
Having had the unfortunate experience of using MadCatz controllers, I would doubt the sanity of anyone that selected one
I’m surprised they went with outlook rather than something like thunderbird. And I’m surprised they are burning power on an os that can run outlook.
A Macbook Neo can run outlook just fine and pulls what, 20 watts?
> Yes they need to get email in space. It's easy way to send documents back and forth.
To me that's probably much more interesting. We assume they have all this fancy NASA tech, probably some special communication protocols, but nope, email is fine. Still not sure why they'd use Outlook, but I guess it's easier than retraining astronauts on Alpine or Mutt.
How long did the US military rely on mIRC... decades, maybe they still do?
US Military still uses IRC/mIRC for similar reasons. Easy to self host and it's low bandwidth.
I'd ask the opposite question. Why would they not use Outlook and instead use something like Alpine or Mutt? This is 2026, you know.
Is this incident not reason enough? Astronauts in space are needing remote support to debug it, and taking up priceless mission time.
Sure, but bespoke software isn't necessarily going to be more reliable.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
> The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed.
This quote is completely and totally irrelevant. Nobody is saying they should code a new Outlook. If they did code something, it would be significantly smaller in scope and rigorously tested like spacebound programs in the past were. "New space-engineering-grade code created with actual engineering practices" is absolutely going to be more reliable than "old bloated commercial shitware". But I guess software engineering is a lost art, so it can't be helped.
It's also going to take a hell of a lot longer and cost more than buying an Outlook license. If I was lead on that project, you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that spending $100k+ on an email solution unless you can point to specific, serious deficiencies in the existing off the shelf solutions.
Software Engineering is far from a lost art: part of the practice is intelligently making cost-benefit decisions.
The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.
Until we've had this failure, I do agree that using COTS software was the logical choice. And now we know better.
Alpine and Mutt are about 20 and 30 years old, respectively.
And that problem would go away with a 30 year-old solution?
You'd want fetchmail with some local server.
And if you are going with some local server, the Exchange/Outlook family is just the worst possible option. Those people already have enough stuff to maintain up there, they don't need something that require in-house expert admins.
Neither outlook nor thunderbird. Best option would be some web browser based email + local web server (on board)
Browsers are heavy and complicated. Better to use something TUI or very light GUI.
> Best option would be some web browser based email
If the computer has a browser, yes. Otherwise, that sounds like a lot of unnecessary moving parts.
I did think 'Thunderbird' would be a more appropriate (named) use on a rocket :-)
mu4e in Emacs works well, or Notmuch, or even Gnus with a local Maildir. Or Mutt if you're more into that. None of these applications can be that much harder than flying the capsule can they?
Yeah, the only other option I’d consider for this would be Apple Mail on an iPad for the same reason that it works well offline or with low bandwidth networks. There’s a QA issue here but the logic is quite reasonable.
Apple Mail does not play nicely with Outlook/Exchange/M365 accounts. Everywhere I've worked had said "You can use Apple Mail if you want, but IT won't be supporting it. Outlook app only." Always issues with syncing mail or contacts.
Outlook is notoriously difficult to interface with. The only real success story I'd ever seen was some Thunderbird extension. I think it was called Owl. I had the company pay for it, but I think that it wasn't very expensive. It synced contacts and calendar too.
I'd have just set up a backup mail client if someone insisted on Outlook. These sorts of issues are very common, and having a backup is the textbook solution if something might go wrong.
Email(smtp) is not a bad choice for messaging in space(or anywhere really) it is a well understood robust protocol designed in a time when all networks were slow and intermittent. Exactly what you need in space.
IMAP probably not so much, It depends too much on having a good network. unless the imap server is on the spaceship(heh, spaceSHIP, that is an optimistic term, but it is all we have, so going with it), I would not expect it to work all that well.
I am not very familiar with outlooks game, Historically my beef with with it and thunderbird was their local data store, I mean it was not strictly speaking bad, but I was like "we have this great Maildir spec, why are you using this propriety database that is prone to corruption, even if you don't like Maildir million files approach at least use sqlite"
>Email(smtp) is not a bad choice for messaging in space
Email (Taylor UUCP g protocol) is a better choice for messaging in space. Resuming partial transmission is great! I used it up until ~2010 and it worked really great on some very, very crappy connections (modems, obviously, CDPD, phone tethering in spotty locations, bad WiFi setups)...
Spacecraft? Shuttle?
> However, on more practical level, what are other options? Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies, is pretty low bandwidth and very familiar to end users.
Claws-mail (https://claws-mail.org) has a good working Windows version. Native desktop app, lightweight, extremely fast, able to handle multigigabyte inboxes for breakfast. The only drawback for some would be that it does not compose (although it can display them just fine) HTML mail, only text-only mail. This is an architectural decision.
I used this for a while. It doesn't display HTML emails just fine. It only supports a subset of stuff which -- as a geek is awesome because it protects me -- but would be hideous to give to a normal user. Literally less than half of my emails were readable.
Hopefully they are not getting exquisitely crafted newsletters in space.
Are you sure? You used the the Fancy HTML Viewer plugin, which uses WebkitGTK2? I never had any problems with HTML Mail rendering in Claws. Your experience must be clearly peculiar to yourself.
Yeah that is the sad thing. Fewer desktop options these days. And CLI client is OK. Actually for an astronaut probably OK as they are used to learning systems. They'd appreciate reliability.
> Outlook, the desktop application works really well with local copies
With local cache for an Exchange server, or with purely local mail (i.e., using .pst files). The latter is mediocre IME. Outlook is an Exchange client; other uses are not in its wheelhouse.
I quit Outlook and went to Thunderbird when I upgraded my CPU and Microsoft told me I had to re-purchase Outlook when I had paid for a "lifetime license". That was the last straw for me. I installed Linux and Thunderbird and have not looked back at Windows.
Obligatory Linux comment when speaking about Microsoft, windows or anything related.
I don't have Linux but you guys make it hard to like it.
I run Outlook in Wine or on the Web on Linux in a VM on Mac and make everyone mad.
I was on Windows for 30 years. I advocated for it and even got a few CTOs to switch from MacOS to Windows because they saw Windows was actually more capable than Apple propaganda would have you believe.
I'm not really sure how you figure that my comment makes Linux hard to like.
I simply don't like the direction Microsoft is headed in, and haven't for some time. Many people don't like it. Microsoft recently may have had a realization as a company and they might change their current direction, but I still doubt I'll go back. They expected me to pay twice for software that I paid a "lifetime license" for, only because I upgraded the CPU in my computer. If you think that somehow makes Linux look bad, then I don't know man...
I run my email inside a virtual machine, so it was easy for me to switch over from Windows/Outlook to Linux/Thunderbird. I certainly don't expect everyone to switch.
Moon landing 1969: 4 KB RAM for the guidance computer is enough.
Moon landing 2026: Two instances of MS Outlook sort of started themselves on the guidance computer and we have no idea why.
1969: Every line of assembly code has been coded according to rigorous standards and vetted and reviewed by a panel of experts.
2026: lol we just realized there's a few million lines of extra code running but we can't figure out why
1969: Every bit of every line of assembly manually woven into core rope memory by highly skilled technicians.
2026: We filled up our 2 TB flash. How do we get another?
1969: Our toilets suck, better be miticulous and careful with waste
2026: Too much shit, we need to design new toilets
The Apollo missions used a disposable bag you taped to your butt.
How come all hiking and road disposable bags don't have the tape.
What could go wrong!
We went from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Power of Ten rules to ‘have you tried restarting Microsoft Outlook?’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_10:_Rules_for_Dev...
Restart which one?!
> on the guidance computer
Source for this running on the GN&C (guidance and nav) computer? Isn’t that built by the ESA?
Can you instead compare the mission critical code of Artemis instead of the email client?
How many KB is the flight controller?
…and we managed to do this without AI!
but... but... mandatory AI quota!
Genuinely shocking that the guidance computer would be running Windows at all.
"... preparing for re-entry, adjusting azimuth, ... APPLY UPDATES AND REBOOT? APPLY UPDATES AND SHUT DOWN? QUEEN? UPDATES?"
Microsoft said something about a Copilot…
I'll bet someone's trying to run the New Outlook and classic Outlook at the same time.
The poor technicians having to RDP with (what I imagine must be) a horrible latency. Although still might be better than some corporate environments lol
They do not have to RDP. Powershell remoting or SSH are way faster way to examine the system.
At the time they were ~57,000km out and I calculated it was at least 380ms RTT to the ground receiver, so bad but not unusable.
The poor technicians having to RDP with (what I imagine must be) a horrible latency.
Once or twice a month, I have to RDP (now "Microsoft Windows App!") into a Windows XP machine on the other side of the continent through a jump box and a dialup connection.
Latency is bad, but not as terrible as you might think. The worst part is moving files between localhost and remote.
RDP in the windows XP days supported all kinds of tricks to work with low bandwidths like doing rendering on the client not the server.
I think most of those tricks have been disabled in modern windows for better security (you don't want some guest user able to feed your not-so-robust awfully complex rendering code some malicious inputs...)
At its current distance, best case RTT would be about 420ms
That wouldn't be terrible to use. I feel like I've done worse supporting in-cab computers on fleet vehicles across 3G cellular.
Keyboard shortcuts and "caching" the state of the remote client in your mind are the keys to doing that work.
Low bandwidth is a bigger problem than high latency. If it takes half a second or even a second for your clicks to register it's not a big deal, you learn to work around it. But if the bandwidth is so low that it takes 5-10 seconds just to write the screen it really sucks.
I don’t know if this craft has it, but they’ve been announcing all over that we’ll get 4K over a 260mbps link from the moon, so that shouldn’t be a problem
O2O system - https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/artemis-ii-will-use-...
Yup. 57kbps transatlantic modem connection to a remote desktop in some country with poor telephone connectivity was probably even worse. Never want to have to do that again!
Is this actually true? What's next? A BSOD? I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings. Unbeliveable.
You're a couple decades behind the news. Basically every version of Windows since 95 has been on spacecraft carrying humans. The ISS notoriously migrated to Linux after a virus spread across their Windows XP systems.
But these things aren't running the guidance computers -- they're laptops.
do you have a link on the virus part? I thought they moved simply for stability
Laptops have built-in battery backup lasting hours.
> I would have ever ever in my life bet that Microsoft software could be shipped in a spacecraft carrying human beings.
Do you also worry when you are flying on an airplane where some other passengers carry a laptop running windows? Just because it is a computer and it is on a spacecraft doesnt mean it will harm human beings if it goes down.
The two Outlook thing happens all the time at work.
It's silly but never causes me issues, I just close the second one. Haven't ever figured out why it happens.
Did the Artemis crew any side effects / problems tied to Outlook?
This is the modern version of the slave reminding the Roman emperor that he is mortal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4pywzk/did_r...
We migrated earlier this year and had a similar problem. Outlook (classic) works differently than the OWA version. They keep the classic version so people don't spontaneously throw a chair out a window. It's being phased out slowly.
I'm betting in 15 years, people will still be using Outlook (classic). This is the culture.
It depends on how badly Microsoft continues to fuck up Outlook (classic).
I don't use Outlook for my personal email, but I've used it in various corporate engagements and not been wholly dissatisfied. Newer versions are slower, more bloated, and unstable (though add-ins-- especially the Teams add-in-- contribute to that).
The most egregious regression, for me, has been the "Advanced Find" functionality (which was wonderful in the 97 thru 2010 versions) being changed-out for the god-awful search box within the Outlook window.
We could have said that for publisher a few years back. Its death knell has been sounded and microsoft aren't even offering any way for people to properly view or print their publisher files, let alone edit them.
The culture is correct, the new version of Outlook is hot garbage
The new version of outlook is our only hope of escaping the IE 6 email renderer in classic outlook, sadly.
Which "new" Outlook? I think there's like 3 versions of Outlook currently on the market. The Classic Win32 one they want you to stop using, the new Lite variant bundled for free with Windows 11, and the new Full Spec one that comes with Office 365, both of which are built on web technologies IIRC.
That one that comes with office 365. My work PC got auto updated with it and I switched back to the Win32 version within an hour because it was buggy and a huge resource hog. It's just an email client and calendar, there's no need to keep reinventing the wheel, especially if you're just gonna make it worse.
The macOS version still has all of them beat.
Its the fucking federal government's policy. Basically it amounts to "pay microsoft as a form of corporate welfare", "permit but not really allow linux", and "this is how it has always been done".
And also because apparently "nobody has ever been fired for choosing Microsoft", which is something that should start happening more often if you ask me
As long as Linux distros have such shit accessibility stories, MacOS and Windows being available should be a requirement for all systems in government.
They keep the classic version so people don't spontaneously throw a chair out a window.
Considering this is a spacecraft, that explains everything.
They also keep their own inboxes; emails downloaded to or sent from the old version are not visible on the new version.
Good thing they didn’t bring copilot with them
I wouldn’t be too sure about that
Absolutely Dave! I can do that for you!
Please imagine the luxury of being SO FAR AWAY from all the crap happening on our planet right now, only to be spoiled by some lousy marketing emails from Microslop hawking their latest Copilot incursion.
One's the "Metro" instance or whatever its called, the other is probably Win32.
I don't understand the title.
It doesn't seem like they are trying to figure out why two copies of outlook are installed, they're trying to figure out why neither is giving them access to their email.
People opening the "wrong" Outlook has been the norm for the last couple of years. Between "Outlook (classic)", "new" Outlook (rolled out with Office 365 clients), and "Outlook" (rolled out with Windows 11) it's been a shit show for a while now.
Oh ya I remember how some computer pulled a windows update over a satellite connection during a research flight (aircraft). That was super expensive, wow. Now Microsoft servers are banned at the outgoing point since you couldn’t reliably stop it the computer itself and new teams with new computers come in.
I'm not letting Microsoft off the hook here, but if you have an expensive metered connection and you're trusting clients (especially a modern personal computer of any operating system type)to play nicely with bandwidth, that's 100% on you.
That's a really sorry state of things, then. There's zero trust in software now, in the literal sense. How did it get that we live in a world where you can't trust a client to enforce its own documented behavior? How did it get to be the user's fault for not using OS and hardware level measures and not the software vendor's fault when the "Automatic updates" toggle is a no-op?
MBAs/consultants hijacked the industry along with an influx of people that only consider leetcode to be sufficient for hiring. The past 10 years has been a major injunction of these people into big tech. The resulting mess is predictable, it'll get worse too which is why we need to break up these companies and allow better more efficient companies to take their place rather than letting them subsidize their failures with their monopolies.
In an environment where bandwidth utilization costs money I think it's a good belt-and-suspenders approach, regardless of the expected behavior of the clients, to enforce policy at the choke point between expensive and not-expensive.
(I think more networks should be built with default deny egress policies, personally. It would make data exfiltration more difficult, would make ML algorithms monitoring traffic flows have less "noise" to look thru, and would likely encourage some efficiency on the part of dependencies.)
Software design is not really my wheelhouse so I can't comment meaningfully on that, but on the networking side I can very confidently say it was a poor architecture. You simply cannot assume that all of your clients are going to be both 1) non-malicious and 2) work exactly as you think they will.
Link saturation would be one of the first things that would come to mind in this situation, and at these speeds QoS would be trivial even for cheap consumer hardware.
Well, on the software design side, there's plenty of scenarios where undocumented behavior crops up on unexpected network interruption. In the example above, Windows can even pre-download updates on metered connections during one time period, then install those updates during another. The customers really can't take the blame for that, IMO.
I think overall society has rapidly deteriorated in software quality and it is mostly because of the devaluing of software design. No one expects quality from software, everyone "understands there are bugs", and some like to take advantage of that. And so the Overton window gets pushed in the direction of "broken forever good luck holding the bag if you use it" rather than the more realistic "occasionally needs to restart IFF you hit an issue and it takes less than <10 seconds and has minimal data loss".
> How did it get that we live in a world where you can't trust a client to enforce its own documented behavior?
My guess a combo of economic incentives and weak legal protections.
I realize that answer applies to so many issues as to be almost not worth saving, but I think it's still true here.
Fair enough, but the fact is that until fairly recently most software wouldn't even pretend to care about conserving bandwidth. I certainly would never expect a desktop OS to do this well, even if MS loves their revenue-generating "bugs."
The world where any unpatched system is a guaranteed botnet.
> since you couldn’t reliably stop it the computer itself and new teams with new computers come in.
Wifi connection settings in Windows have a "metered connection" setting, which disables automatically downloading updates. I don't recall exactly when this was introduced, but I had to use it for a year while I was stuck on satellite internet. You can even set data caps and such.
Of course, it's always off by default, and I have no idea if there's any way to provision the connection via enterprise admin to default to on for a particular network (I would assume not) so you'd be stuck hoping everyone that comes in does the right thing.
It's a good setting. I've found it gets reset sometimes from Windows updates, so you must remain vigilant.
Someone, somewhere has an unwatched phone waiting for an authorisation code response...
Wasn’t it Bill Gates’ dream that every coffee machine should run Windows? I guess he’s got his wish. Also, redundancy: Imagine going into space and then have no email! Can’t let that happen.
There are probably more running copies of freeRTOS than windows in the world...
Every car has more reliable software onboard.
The astronaut's quote needs to be a billboard ad.. "I also see I have 2 instances of Outlook, and neither of those are working".
One is hacked by a Russian hacker group based in St. Petersburg, the other is hacked by a Chinese hacker group, and the third instance was actually BackOrifice but it couldn't get enough resources to run because of the other two.
Your best hope is a fourth group hacks in (probably best Korea) and fixes one of the other two.
Houston, we have a problem!
Thank you for contacting us, my name is James, I am a senior Microsoft application community troubleshooter...
Welcome to Houston support chatbot, powered by CoPilot. How may I help you?
Redundancy is a thing in aerospace engineering.
Something tells me this ain't the kind of redundancy aerospace engeneering really needs
Bashing on MS products and on ReactJS (apparently used by spacex UIs) is a common pastime here and I'm guilty of it myself.
But here we're talking about actual space rockets flying to space with humans in them.
My expectation would be that something like https://tigerstyle.dev/ would be followed or the NASA rules linked from there https://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/P10.pdf
At a previous job I was a developer on a medical instrument that used Windows to run the UI.
Before everyone gets all up in arms about it, Windows/Linux UI & database with external microcontrollers handling real-time control is a very common architectural choice for medical and industrial equipment. To the point where many Systems-on-Module (SoMs) come with a Linux-capable ARM processor and a separate, smaller processor for real-time, linked via shared memory.
Anyway, a customer called to report a weird bug that we couldn't resolve. After remoting into the instrument, we discovered that one of the lab technicians had attempted to install Excel on it. At some point the install must have failed, but it left a .dll behind that was causing a conflict with something in our code and keeping the UI from starting properly.
No, we did not learn anything from this incident...
Isn't this what Embedded Windows was always for, like for use in medical equipment, ATMs, POS, PLC, oscilloscopes, etc? Basically stuff that's supposed to be fire-and-forget, run 24/7 and that the user shouldn't be able to tinker with.
And also what group policies were for, that can disable the user from installing any software?
Am I wrong to assume that the fuckup was on your end, for using the wrong tool and not configuring it properly?
> Am I wrong to assume that the fuckup was on your end, for using the wrong tool and not configuring it properly?
Not at all. I agree that it should have been locked down and only privileged accounts should be allowed software update. But the system auto-booted into an Administrator account so it really wasn't a surprise that eventually someone would do something stupid.
I will say that this was for Windows NT retail, not Windows NT Embedded. At that point, getting an NT Embedded license practically required sacrificing your firstborn child. It was only when Microsoft got to Win XP Embedded that the license didn't look like it was written by a team of lawyers who already knew that they were perpetually in Hell.
>But the system auto-booted into an Administrator account
Sounds like a major NT configuration mistake.
Memories now of what we were given at the hospital long ago: our obstetrics ward was using Philips OBTraceVue software. The original FDA-approved system required Philips to package the OS and hardware all together, so we were given a bunch of generic Compaq desktops to run their fetal heartrate monitoring on.
The biggest annoying complaint was "we want to run our EHR software on it!" but because of the FDA requirements, we weren't allowed to install anything on the box. Yet somehow providing AV could be OK in some cases, and in other cases installing Citrix? And then we'd somehow find out someone managed to install the EHR client onto it anyways and it became a big old mess to have to have Philips come send a tech out of their own to reimage a PC we couldn't "legally" service.
It was a big messy pain for a while back in the day. Was happy when we finally got to upgrade to the newer IntelliSpace software on our own PCs in the ward. (Also got to meet a support engineer that came out rocking an Agilent badge, so that was super cool on its own right of history...)
> somehow providing AV could be OK in some cases, and in other cases installing Citrix?
The only way this could possibly have passed FDA scrutiny would be if the original manufacturer had validated this particular system configuration and approved it.
There's probably tons of stuff like this going on all over the place, but it manages to say under the radar, so no one notices it. But with the FDA's increased scrutiny on cybersecurity it will eventually disappear.
Back in like early aughts I remember seeing an ATM in Rome that had evidently crashed and was sitting at a DOS prompt. I was much younger then, but I remember thinking it wasn't terribly surprising, but it was also a bit of a wizard of oz moment.
That wasn't a Therac-25 by any chance?
Sorry. Couple decades too late.
this is a crew laptop and not a mission critical computer at all.
since the astronauts are asking about it i'm guessing it wasn't snuck onboard. Sneaking stuff on to spacecraft to play with on the moon was a thing, i think one of the Apollo astronauts smuggled a golf club and balls to hit on the moon.
(I realize this mission is to only orbit and not land on the moon)
That info puts things into perspective thanks.
Maybe for emails and calendars, wouldn't want them to arrive and miss the appointment.
Coordinating time-zone issues between remote meeting participants on a single celestial body is complex enough. >smile<
That gives me so many questions: Should there be a non-Earth timezone? How do you define a "day" in space? Is there a day light saving in space?
At least they are not travelling near the speed of light. That's a whole different can of worms.
At least the proposal let's time-zones go away, since "day" is completely artificial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_the_Moon#Coordi...
May need triple redundancy for MS Outlook for the next mission.
Well, I wasn't that worried for the astronauts before, but now that I know they're running windows, I'm not so sure.
NNCP would have more sense there.
guys former NASA Mission Control Web Tool Team and OCA here (Orbital Comms Adapter office which was a backroom position)
Crews have been using thinkpad laptops (personal laptops since the 2005) on the ISS and Shuttle. Artemis is likely an extension of this
Laptops go through a long space hardening and verification process. Windows and Outlook is the result of that
We used to do "Mail Syncs" which taking the outlook file and pushing it up to the crews laptop doing a comm window via TDRSS network -that how astronauts got their email
is this high tech - no -does it work and been done for years yes.
> guys former NASA Mission Control Web Tool Team and OCA here
Wow, very cool and lot's of respect!
But... why not use linux, unix, custom OS, iPad, Android, Nintendo SNES, Atari, Commodore 64... anything BUT Microsoft?
(Seriously though, why not Linux? I'd really appreciate if you could answer, thank you! )
Well as to why they were chosen back in the STS (shuttle) era (before my time) see a good history on the decision here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=27043.0
1. In the space program decisions are made years before and changes are very difficult owing to a myriad of reasons from procedures to paperwork, eg there was a whole mirror lab setup on the ground To support them etc
2. Astronauts/Aerospace operationally often come from defense world - they are used to windows - see DoD -that battle was fought in the 80s/90s
3. Once something is a part of the space program it takes on a life of its own/ we had an IIS webserver onboard the ISS for example and also apache tomcat - we (myself wrote software for both) using .NET and Java
4. Training and operational software and docs were all MS Office variety for years (were talking from floppy disk era here)
5. Lot of other linux/unix based systems too this is is just crew support laptops - not considered mission critical
I didn't expect they are running Windows up there. Shouldn't be specialized and curated ... smthing else?
Running Windows in outer space takes some pretty big balls. Gives me a cold sweat just thinking about it.
What should they be using instead? These astronauts are not Linux hackers.
These astronauts are trained to use the system NASA puts them in.
And ultimately they have a lot more important things to be doing then learning a different email client than the one they use at their desk on earth. This is an email client on a laptop, not a navigation system.
OMG, this almost became real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zpCOYkdvTQ
("Fuck Microsoft" scene from the Netflix TV Series: Space Force)
Unless I’m mistaken Space Force is a netflix series.
Oh, apparently you are right! Thanks for the correction.
Enshittification has reached space. Woohoo! We did it. Just use the web version! Love to know how how the web version loads with a couple of seconds network latency.
I want to say something like "oh well, this is certainly a non-critical piece of software". Hopefully it's the convenient dashboard and there are other, more hardened consoles for fallback or something.
But in all seriousness, and without glibness or sarcasm: I cannot comprehend how there is any "unexpected" software running on that spacecraft, regardless of operating system.
EDIT*** For those who like me only watched the video and didn't read the thread: This is on a laptop that is non-critical, it is not a part of the spacecraft. Whew. Now I'm sad that one of the Linux distros didn't try to pitch themselves to the astronauts for a sponsorship... Would have been especially on brand for Pop_OS.
They have a diverse range of devices, including iPhones
It'd be fun to be a telco tech and realize that you've an attempted connection from an iPhone 50 miles up and receding fast.
And connected to the network!
From the comments:
Andy Meyers @andymeyers10.bsky.social · 3h I said “launch window”, not “Launch Windows”!
Copilot (which one?!?) says "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot allow you to do that"
Is it just me that finds it terrifying that theres any Windows bits on a spaceship?
Clippy: “Hi, it looks like you’re trying to go to the Moon”
Ugh. Actually...
> The thing about Space is that it's just so huge. Unbelievably so. And the real challenge? You have to make all your delta-V for orbital speed by pushing gas very fast. In one go.
>"Is it just me that finds it terrifying that theres any Windows bits on a spaceship?"
SpaceX Crew Dragon console interfaces are entirely React apps
Everything is terrifying in computing these days, and bringing it to space rockets makes it even more terrifying.
I think we need to mandate intentionally slower, sandboxed, and resource-constrained development environments/containers so developers are unable to abuse resources like they're "free" and in so using wasteful and improper algorithms to expand to fill the volume of the container (RAM, CPU, IOPS, storage capacity, and network bandwidth and latency) like an ideal gas. Lazy coding and excessive abstractions on top of VMs on top of more abstractions all the way down leads to shit.
Good! I've long said that Embedded UIs should be transitioning to being locally hosted webapps for a variety of reasons.
God, no. The last thing we need is to bring the bloated, slow, unpleasant to use nature of web apps to embedded devices.
What would that variety of reasons be? Genuinely asking.
Main reason is easy availability of developers. Can't swing a dead cat without hitting a web developer, whereas try finding one that even knows what LVGL is.
Tons of existing libraries and frameworks. Essentially every UI problem you're likely to have is solved already, there are Known Good ways of dealing with most problems that you'll encounter.
Consistent interface: the primary interaction element is the browser and HTML is the simplest thing there is to generate. You can write a basic webserver in an afternoon.
And so on...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41655299
This comment makes it feel a lot safer, when you think about it.
"Web browsers are historically known for crashing, but that's partly because they have to handle every page on the whole Internet. A static system with the same browser running a single website, heavily tested, may be reliable enough for our needs."
When you've also built up the metal that you're running that React on, it's a lot warmer and cozier than having to trust the whole fat Windows 11 codebase on Artemis...
It's fine if you ignore supply chain attacks on npm packages.
Blame the gaggle of idiots from that slop thread the other day.
Now that the clowns are running the circus, I suspect digital goods will begin to rapidly decay soon.
"Houston, we've got two problems"
Why in the name of all that's holy would you use a Microsoft product on a mission like this? Just about the only thing you can trust about MS is that their software is buggy.
Because they have the power to insert themselves in places like these. It's a bigger problem. There are places in which companies with Microslop's level of quality have no business to be, but they're already there.
The fun thing about this, is it can change at anytime for any reason. All we need to do is get the right people in power, a good step toward this direction would be to actually support abolishing big tech (which many primary challengers have as a platform position).
USS Yorktown, the aegis missile carrier comes to mind for some reason.
I think it was the same ship which shot down a passenger airliner.
I believe that the use of Windows NT for Aegis control was fleet-wide, so that problem wasn't unique to the Yorktown. That just happened to be where it was discovered.
You are wrong on all points.
The US shot down Iran Air 655 using the USS Vincennes, a Ticonderoga class ship. The shootdown was before Windows existed.
It's controversial what to "blame", but I generally blame the captain, who defied all reason and caution to shoot down an aircraft that they never identified. He went gung ho and maybe got tunnel vision but he should have been outright court martialed. That should have been treated as "No, this is not acceptable behavior for someone of the rank of captain even if you hadn't shot down an airliner"
Windows has zero relevance to that.
“Guns don’t kill people, Windows does”?
We can't even leave the planet without MS enshittifying our equipment. God, I really want out of this timeline
Just imagine the aliens capture a probe and try to use Windows. What will they think of us?!
Don't worry, it will stop them at installation and demand internet access and creation of a Microsoft cloud account.
First they laugh.
Then they wanna just cry when it brings down their whole starfleet with a virus that they have no immunity to ;)
Clippy "It looks like you're trying to go to the Moon. Want any help with that?"
Why on God's green earth is Windows running on the Artemis spaceship?
They're not on God's green earth anymore, now are they?
It’s also blue, not green.
touche!
Because we're talking about an off-the-shelf laptop here, not a flight computer.
British nuclear subs were running Windows XP until at least 2017. It's easy to google, but the best article about it is No, Trident doesn't run on windows XP (https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/no-trident-doesnt-run-window...), which ironically makes it very clear that Trident subs were running on Windows XP and had no plans to replace it.
Most UK government excuse: "The programme undertaken by the Royal Navy and BAE Systems to equip the fleet with a Windows-based command system was completed in just 18 days."
Translated: "You couldn't do better in 18 days, so you don't have a right to worry or criticize. Also, don't ask why this was pushed off until the last 18 days of the project."
What should they use for email?
Literally anything else. In 1992 we did email on the command line with green screen terminals
Pine
Huh, back in the 2001/2002 timeframe I worked at an old company that gave everyone a Windows laptop but us engineers also had UNIX accounts on the server cluster, which we logged into for dev work.
Our company was hit with one of the worms (don’t remember which). Thousands of emails constantly coming in and everyone scrambling to delete them - except people like me, who were on vacation. I returned to an inbox that instantly crashed Outlook. IT was trying to find a solution. But I logged into the UNIX cluster, opened Pine, and deleted all the crap, page by page. When I got most of it done, Outlook started working again.
IT was shocked but then told everyone else to go do what I did, eliminating their need to do any work. So I guess you win some and you lose some..
ILOVEYOU was in 2000 and behaved that way. I remember we just shut off our Exchange servers until there was a fix. Email was still new enough that the world didn't implode.
Couldn't you delete or filter /var/spool/mail?
I am still using mutt.
Is this a serious question
Alpine & Linux?
Most probably it can’t connect to the server without running IT-mandated security software that runs only on Windows
Are you running that on a flight system or on an additional computer where it would be fine to run Windows?
The entire point is to avoid an OS like windows; and an email client like Outlook?
Yeah I get the point, I'm saying it's not really a good point, running Windows and Outlook on a secondary system is fine. Forcing the astronauts to learn to use some other system would be a waste of time and probably worse than whatever it is you see as the problem.
Why do they “need” email access in the first place?! What the actual fuck.
They're officers and researchers strapped into their seats for 10 days, what could they be doing that doesn't involve email
Traditionally, officers would probably be working on their powerpoint slide decks.
I wonder if they've checked for any rogue sharepoint instances yet...
Play minesweeper or solitaire...
Research with the data they’ve collected so far?
This hurts my brain so very much, the idea that email is necessary in outer space — I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Why the poverty mindset? If we are gonna joy ride around the moon we should at least do it in style.
The poverty mindset is that you still need to check your mail while riding around the moon. Style would be no email at all.
Corresponding with family members? What do you want them to use, Teams?
Because Microsoft is an American company, and Linux is some kind of a communist daycare center.
computer virus
noun
Did they consider scrapping the humans, and just installing co-pilot? heh .. heh.. /s
There was a literal meme in spaceforce about this. Have we learnt nothing ?
Microslop will now troll people outside of the Earth, a great achievement for them.
So does this mean they now also have... 2 Copilots... ? Terrible joke.