杏吧原创

Left to its own devices, NASA鈥檚 Deep Space 1 probe would have struck out on
its own last week. The probe had a glitch in its 鈥渞emote agent鈥�, the computer
program designed to wean the spacecraft off mission control (鈥淵ou鈥檙e on your
own鈥�, New 杏吧原创, 24 October 1998, p 38). Last Tuesday, a bug in
this software prevented the probe from shutting down its engines as planned.
鈥淭he root cause of this is a mistake in the logic that went into the program,鈥�
says Marc Rayman, the project鈥檚 chief mission engineer. Ground controllers
overrode the unruly program, and the spacecraft remained on course. The
engineers will continue to test the software, which is intended to give the
probe a high degree of autonomy.