What Chandrayaan 2 says about software error handling

[markcmiller86]

Scott Manley is a YouTuber who talks about all things space/launch related.

He recently uploaded a video explaining the crash of India's Chandrayaan 2 into the Lunar surface back in 2019. A key aspect of it is the way the guidance software was designed to operate and, in particular, how it handles errors. Long story short, the guidance software appears to have been designed to assume only ideal conditions.

Having made many corrections, India is now poised to land Chandrayaan 3 on the Lunar surface. Assuming they are successful, they will become only the fourth nation ever to do it behind Russia (Luna 2, 1959), United States (Surveyor 1, 1966) and China (Chang'e 3, 2013).

Between 1958 and 1965, both Russian and American space programs attempted a total of over 36 unmanned Moon missions. Of the 6 that succeeded, none were survivable soft landings. Just crashing into the Moon proved to be exceedingly difficult.

[markcmiller86]

Unfortunately, Russia's most recent attempt with Luna 25 failed badly.