Also do you not run these tests in an even more simulated environment where there is only the flight computer and no real hardware at all?
We normally have a Functional Test Assembly (real computer and some other hardware for testing) to run our tests against, but we only have one setup and it is consistently unreliable. This particular CLT was unable to get a clean run in the lab but it was decided that the issues were related to the lab setup rather than the actual test, so we moved forward to run on the satellite (against our team's protests).
This to me is the real crux of the issue: if we can't even trust our own testing environment, what's the point of having it at all? If the customer is so risk averse, why would we take this chance? Needless to say, I don't think we'll be running anything on the satellite without full FTA vetting anytime in the near future.
To the last part first: Good that safe mode kicked in and did the right thing, but now what? What caused it to enter safe mode in the first place?
That's why they care when it happens. If they don't know why it's entering safe mode, they can't correct the actual problems in the system.
The non-critical functions are all the things the customer actually bought the satellite for. Cool that it's still alive, but now the Space Internet / death lasers / etc. are offline.
To your point, yes you're correct. The cause of the safemode is much more interesting than the fact we entered it.
Its interesting to see that someone with a 2B budget have the same problem as someome with 5 million budget... we have an engineering model for our cubesats but its flaky