Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why | Hacker News Reader

Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why

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498 pointsmooreds366 comments

The point is not running Windows or Outlook on a PC in space. The point is that the Software was not sealed, downloading upgrades while in space, sending telemetry back to Microsoft (or to whoever else). Those PC are like any other instrument onboard the spacecraft: it's status needs to be known and predictable by NASA.

Not to talk about the amount of unknown and unpredictable extra traffic caused by those PCs onto the "space internet links" which can easily clog any other communication.

And not to talk about smartphones.

This is actually rocket (and space) science, not the horse market fair!

> it's status needs to be known and predictable by NASA

Ah yes but do you think MS gives a flap about this?

Same thing with the recent Fedramp certification. "Hey they're using it so we might as well certify"

Well, it is the other way around actually: NASA should not give a flap about MS tooling, and naturally avoid it completely. Whoever thought of having an Outlook or even 2 out of all the things on there should look for another job, because they clearly cannot be trusted with astronaut lives.

One is Russian malware and the other is Chinese ;)

Microsoft beleaguered a federal agency which pretends to be a lot larger than it is (and has a lot of help doing it) with nonresponsive filings. The employees of that agency, FedRAMP, referred to Azure as "a pile of shit" but ultimately approved it anyway.

   https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-cloud-fedramp-cybersecurity-government

It's hard to find hard numbers (I looked), but in the "FedRAMP over 10 years" chart partway down in this article FedRAMP themselves claims to have approximately 25 employees, which (I infer prior to DOGE) was augmented to approximately 80 staff with contractors.

   https://www.fedramp.gov/2025-09-30-fedramp-built-a-modern-foundation-in-fy25-to-deliver-massive-improvements-in-fy26/

Hope that the `metered connection` option was toggled on.

Lol.

Windows update in space has to be a banned torture method.

Not just space. There was a time around 2000 or so when US military tanks were running Windows NT and they did what one would expect, BSOD Blue Screen of Death. No idea if that ever resulted in casualties.

https://www.businessinsider.com/artemis-astronauts-microsoft...

> After Wiseman flagged the issue, Mission Control said it could remotely access his system with permission.

> Soon after, a member of Mission Control said, "We wanted to let Reid know we are done remoting into his PCD 1." They added that the issue had been resolved and that the system would appear offline, as "expected."

> The personal computing device, or PCD, is how the crew accesses the internet during the flight and tracks its timeline, NASA said on the livestream. The device used on the mission is the MS Surface Pro, per an Artemis II factsheet.

The factsheet:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230017638/downloads/13...

> Used for PFCs (private family conference), PMCs (private medical communication/conference), office apps, DSLR imagery storage, viewing recorded stills/videos on camera controllers

Notably, it looks like it came down to the Surface Pro and Dell XPS 15, and part of the reason why the Surface won was "significantly more particulate and quantities of toxic gases" emitted by the XPS's larger battery in the worst-case scenario of a battery fire: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210013869/downloads/20...

> The six key test configurations are shown in Table D-2. A ¼-scale OSEF was used in place of a full-scale unit. Performance results were assessed accordingly. The Orion Program is considering flying one of two different laptop models, a Surface Pro or a Dell XPS 15. Both were tested during this test series. Sealed and unsealed OFC prefilters also were tested.

...

> Testing revealed that the rise in temperature is directly related to the number of cells ignited. Maximum temperature rise inside the CBA during a Dell XPS 15 fire was 22 °F. The maximum temperature rise inside the CBA during a Surface Pro fire was 7 °F. Figure D-13 shows the relative temperature rises for several tests.

...

> - When larger numbers of laptop cells were ignited, higher concentrations of toxic gases, increased particulate densities, and greater production of thermal energy were observed.

> - The larger the number of laptop battery cells ignited, the more likely the ammonia concentration was to reach levels capable of potentially poisoning the OSEF CO oxidation catalyst.

You don't need installing windows on surface pro -- do you?

I’ve tried Linux on an older surface pro. It sucks, pen/touch is not reliable, the device wouldn’t shut off properly which drained the battery. But I guess NASA would have the budget to resolve that.

Kinda curious what model/when you tried it. I recently picked up a dirt-cheap Surface Go 2 and everything I've tried works great ootb including pen/touch, at least with Gnome, which was very surprising. Runs way smoother than the Win11 it came with too.

From my limited understanding it seems like a few years ago you needed a separate kernel for at least that model but nowadays everything's upstreamed seemingly.

Surface Pro 4, it is an older model, so it cannot run Win11. Indeed I needed a custom kernel.

I’m still quite happy with Win10 though.

I’ll have a look at Linux again.

I love the idea that even on a mission to the moon the crew still needs to allocate a portion of their time to click through cookie consent banners, non skippable ads and fighting with windows update! Probably part of the effort to make the environment similar to life on earth to make the long trip more bearable.

"Meet hot local singles in Moon Orbit today!"

https://xkcd.com/713/

This would be the funniest scene, at the last moments of the movie "Artemis: Forward to the past"

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.

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.

What’s the NROs take on capturing the signal from the ground? They already have it from a satellite in space.

If it’s broadcasting then you can pick it up, is my understanding of US law. Hopefully they’re using a secured access point and SSL :-)

Taking bets that the access point is called "Free Airport WIFI"

https://www.npr.org/2010/10/09/130451369/the-zombie-network-...

And they control the spacecraft using a Logitech Bluetooth game controller

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.

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

> 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.

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.

As long as the orbit isn't changing, pointing the antenna is not hard and can be done by hand. I've done it with a handheld yagi antenna and the ISS, which has a 90-minute orbit (and an amateur radio repeater). I used a computer program to find the next overhead transit, paying attention to start & end times and start & end azimuth. Then used a watch to know where to point the antenna during the transit: at the horizon at the start, overhead halfway through the transit, at the opposite horizon at the end. Transits were 5-10 minutes so there's plenty of time to move the antenna.

WiFi, no, but if you've got a ham radio license, then you can reach them.

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.

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.

Having had the unfortunate experience of using MadCatz controllers, I would doubt the sanity of anyone that selected one

OceanGate was Logitech not MadCatz

I deeply regret the error; MadCatz would have failed long before.

Gad those things were crap.

They'd probably still be alive if they used MadCatz, because it would have failed long before they submerged.

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?

I would be fascinated to see the actual measured power consumption at baseline and when it's actually running Outlook

NASA is a large government organization. Microsoft Outlook is understandable. I assumed they were reading their normal email.

Laptop uses negligible power. The solar panels generate eight houses worth of power (they don't give number).

> 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.

Wow I remember that from late OIF. Fascinating that they're still using it!

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.

Alpine and Mutt are about 20 and 30 years old, respectively.

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.

Sure, but people who didn't know better until this particular incident do not deserve the title "engineer". Being able to classify and manage risks before they happen is engineering 101.

Engineering requires working around constraints as well - and a major constraint of any project I've worked on was budget. If they wrote a new email client and it had some bug, we'd be laughing about why they didn't use one of the COTS email clients.

It’s a personal communication device. It’s not mission critical.

Alpine and mutt are about as far from bespoke as it gets. Both are far less likely to suffer from bugs than outlook.

And that problem would go away with a 30 year-old solution?

That problem would be much less likely with a minimalist battle tested OSS solution whose maintainers and users have decidedly different priorities than those governing something like outlook or even thunderbird.

The higher the stakes the more valuable minimalism becomes.

If they have stock outlook they are doing normal networking and are connected to the normal internet over some deep-space antenna setup. So why not just use Debian and gmail in the browser if you want easy? The ISS uses Debian. I can't believe it's too hard to get astronauts to open Firefox

The browser would be far too slow for practical use. Local fist software, which ironically outlook is, would be the way to go.

Does the modern PWA-based outlook even support offline access? I know the old outlook that is no longer being updated does.

Old Outlook still works and is supported until ~2029. We still use it here.

what is old Outlook? for me that's Outlook Express 6 :D

Gmail is not an Outlook replacement. Gsuite as a whole has more or less the required pieces, but there is no single google product that covers the feature set of Outlook + Exchange.

NASA is deep in Microsoft's stack. Meetings with NASA are the only time I have to use Teams

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.

Aaaaarrrrrrhhhhh !

You crazy mad man, are you trying to start a world war ??

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.

Dude you are on HN no Reddit, most people around here use Linux

I wished I believed this, but it feels closer to 50% Apple, 35% Windows, 15% Linux.

We could do with a poll.

You also need to define "use".

No one or almost no one specifies whether they use $OS at work or for their own stuff, or whether the work $OS is mandatory for the organization.

And at home... the IT HNer probably has everything. I'd bet everyone who says they use Mac OS on the desktop also has Linux boxes.

> I'd bet everyone who says they use Mac OS on the desktop also has Linux boxes.

Guilty.

It's probably more like 85% Apple, 10% Linux, 5% Windows.

Considering Apple's always-low market share worldwide on desktop and mobile, I find those ratios hard to believe, even on a niche website like HN.

It started literally with Outlook (implied Windows), and Microsoft.

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.

> 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.

using apple mail app with exactly literally that. not a problem in 4-5 years. switched phones/computers recently and set up process was no glitch. just awful MS login with a bunch of login redirects and then it's fine.

if IT told me to use outlook app Id be gone the next day probably

I was you. And then I needed access to other account and you cant get them running without using Outlook as far as I can tell.

I hate Apple Mail Search, I loath Outlook.

Interesting... I mean I use other non-Microsoft mail as well but to be fair I only use 1 Microsoft account.

Oh, so you are saying there might be other cases than your own? Or do you think that the way you work is the only way? I'm curious to find out whether or not the configuration of your phone and accounts is the only one. If it is, let's talk so we can fix a multimillion dollar problem with email. Please, send me a message ASAP.

Last company I had to deal with this was about 1500 users and we got 2-3 tickets a week on Apple Mail sync issues. "Switch to the outlook app, ticket closed"

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"

Spacecraft? Shuttle?

>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)...

Outlook when connected with exchange (which is probably the case, with corporate network email accounts connected) does not use SMTP nor IMAP, but Exchange RPC protocol, with underlying data model based on X.400 not SMTP. Can actually work pretty well but the implementation had been successfully eroded over last decade or more.

P.S. SMTP isn't well designed for slow and intermittent network protocols, it's designed so that you can bang it out on teletype by paying a grad student a twinkie and coffee and that should hopefully translate into simple implementation across different systems (only to relearn all the lessons of more complex ones, badly)

> 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.

Hopefully they are not getting exquisitely crafted newsletters in space.

As someone with deep experience in MIME encoding/parts, HTML for emails, and email client support for different HTML/CSS/image content, this is a sinkhole.

The world will be better off when we fork HTML so there is one standard email-safe version that all modern email clients support natively. There’s entirely too much security surface area to put arbitrary HTML into emails and expect any 2 email clients to render it correctly / the same.

Email needs its “no more IE6” moment.

> There’s entirely too much security surface area to put arbitrary HTML into emails ...

We manage it with browsers though.

Don't get me wrong, I've never liked html in emails to begin with. It's the same issue that markdown and every other rich text system has regarding where to draw the line. HN even strips most emojis (and I think that's a good thing).

“We manage it”

Vapid statement.

When emojis are stripped on one website, users of that website understand it’s a product limitation.

When links work on one email client but not another, that’s a huge issue for the email sender and a lot of headache to learn/study the differences between email clients and the stack they are built on.

The difference between HTML and CSS properties supported on different email clients is WILD.[1] the rendering differences are significant, as are the man hours required to get emails to mostly look predictable on the breadth of email clients in use today.

And remember that every time there is a browser engine (or even just a fork) people have to maintain it. They need to develop features, squash bugs, patch security issues, pull from upstream, coordinate with downstream forks, etc. webmail providers are SaaS but have to have intricate and accurate understanding of every browser parse / rendering bug/permutation and a deep understanding of all of the legit HTML/CSS/JavaScript/DOM/XML/images/URLs (including weird ones like data: blobs) supported by every browser.

“we manage it” is doing an insane amount of hiding the complexity there.

[1] https://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/email-client-css-s...

I never claimed email clients were uniform (that would obviously be incorrect). I responded to "too much security surface area" with "browsers seem to manage it". The security is clearly a solvable problem because we all use the solution every day.

In your analogy, different email clients equate to different products (ie websites). I agree that it's a headache for users. My point was that it's not an unsolvable security issue but rather an unsolvable lack of agreement about what should and shouldn't be included in a rich text representation, or if email should even use rich text at all for that matter.

Would it matter for this particular use?

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.

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.

Like a fetchmail admin?

The point is that fetchmail doesn't need an admin once it is configured.

I did think 'Thunderbird' would be a more appropriate (named) use on a rocket :-)

Neither outlook nor thunderbird. Best option would be some web browser based email + local web server (on board)

> 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.

Browsers are heavy and complicated. Better to use something TUI or very light GUI.

Mutt in space

Why go through all that trouble to reinvent SMTP? Outlook is trash, but the web is even worse.

A modern browser is much more complicated and heavier than the old Outlook, and probably the latest Outlook too.

> 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'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 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.

Discussion of the MIME part’s encoding as being an inefficient size is missing the forest for the trees.

The entire message is (or can be) compressed before transmission (eg. When IMAP has DEFLATE enabled).

Just because an intermediate encoding step expands binary to make it text safe doesn’t mean it has to stay uncompressed during the entire existence of that MIMe message.

If all you need is file transfer even the message header is a lot of overhead (how much overhead depends on the client and how many devices handle the message). Mail servers don't always handle large files very well either. Even if they upload correctly downloading can be difficult. It's not uncommon for a single message with a large attachment to clog a mailbox and prevent other messages from being sent/received. That said, I'm not even saying it can't/wont work, just that there's better options for sending files and there are certainly better MUAs than outlook.

This is all conjecture.

I’m not arguing for Outlook. I wouldn’t touch that POS unless I was forced to.

But maybe it’s just easier to not have to teach an astronaut to use another app. If they are using Outlook in space, it’s probably the same app and server they use on the ground.

Of course FTP or RSYNC or whatever would be slightly more efficient for the transfer or more capable or retrying / resuming. I’m not arguing that either.

Sometimes it’s more important that the astronaut doesn’t have to learn another app instead/ system.

Sometimes it’s better to choose a less efficient system that is less prone to accidental destructive. It’s not like anybody ever screwed up a sync command and accidentally wiped a directory or anything.[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1kawpyu/rsy...

But without the intermediate encoding step the compression would give a better result.

Find me an example where the Zipped version of a Base64 encoded image was larger than the raw image by more than the length of my comment.

I’ll wait.

Unlikely. If you are talking about adding headers, or encryption, then yeah the compression might give worse result, it's due to more input data and/or encryption increasing the entropy of the signal. Otherwise, transparent encoding should not affect any decent compression algorithms, where frequency and entropy are leveraged.

They're almost certainly using an Exchange server; Outlook is not (just) an email app. Attachments are not being sent via smtp.

Great, one more thing that can fail. Does anyone remember, that some time ago lots of people were in panic, because Exchange servers had a vulnerability on "high severity" level, and people everywhere had to patch their Exchange servers, if they didn't rent them from a service provider? Can't wait to see that happening again, this time affecting an Exchange server used by astronauts in space!

These aren't mission critical systems, they can lose their email

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?

What are they emailing? I'd guess that all of the telemetry data, visual data,etc is getting sent to mission control via radio link. What's the outlook email even for?

It's so HR can remind them to complete their yearly NASA ethics trainings on time.

I hope they don’t need to search an email. Outlook may be familiar but it’s a familiar pain.

> and very familiar to end users.

How is this a factor for the very few users going you use it? (besides, for the primitive needs familiarity is of questionable use to begin with, almost any gui email client would do)

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

But how can we square that claim with the fact that they're having bog standard broken IT issues .... in space? What kind of "space hardening" process results in the mission having problems like this so quickly?

Id assume the result of hardening and verification prcoess would be entirely removing those softwares and everything they bring with them. Fork a Linux Distro, NASOS or whatever, adapt it perfectly to your needs and you'll have a software that you can work on for 100 years with full control and security at your hands.

The market then will change and new trends and stupid fads will come and pass, the distro and all its software youve made, will stay the same.

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.

Laptops have built-in battery backup lasting hours.

Are you suggesting that’s the reason they use them? They use laptops because desktops are too big. The laptops aren’t there as some sort of a contingency for a power loss. They’re there to do their research work. You know, how scientists on earth use laptops, and or desktops.

How do you know that? Desktop form factors are much more flexible, making them effectively smaller. They don't need a case - you can disassemble them, build them into cabinets and consoles; you can reduce their volume to a keyboard (or less).

They’re not looking for a science fair project, it’s a production piece of IT equipment.

Adding a bunch of bespoke equipment is an unnecessary risk when a well understood off the shelf product fits the bill. It’s just office equipment for doing basic computer tasks. A laptop is appropriate.

Much production IT equipment in industrial and many other settings is what I described. It's a mature, commonplace form factor. It's in cars (without keyboards), control rooms, server racks ...

That said, I don't know why they use laptops, and it doesn't look like you do either.

I’m not making things up. Much has been written about the use of PC on spacecraft. As it turns out, PCs make good PCs:

https://gizmodo.com/how-astronauts-use-laptops-on-the-intern...

https://web.archive.org/web/20160526014418/https://www.techr...

do you have a link on the virus part? I thought they moved simply for stability

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-spa...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=288028

> 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.

If there was a possibility to hook that device up to any flight critical other stuff, or carry it in the cockpit maybe I would be worried. (am not the GP)

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

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.

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!

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-...

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...)

They do not have to RDP. Powershell remoting or SSH are way faster way to examine the system.

Sure, and it's genuinely great they finally have effectively SSH, but is it going to be sufficient to troubleshoot Outlook..?

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

What could go wrong!

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.

Because hiking is usually done under gravity.

"Give me a napkin quick. There's a turd floating through the air" - Tom Stafford, Apollo 10 Commander (1969) [1]

"I used to want to be the first man to Mars. This has convinced me that, if we got to go on Apollo, I ain't interested" - Ken Mattingly, Apollo 16 Pilot (1972) [2]

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/5/26/8646675/apollo-10-turd-poop

[2] https://apollojournals.org/afj/ap16fj/24_Day9_Pt1.html#:~:te...

…and we managed to do this without AI!

but... but... mandatory AI quota!

Can you instead compare the mission critical code of Artemis instead of the email client?

How many KB is the flight controller?

Your parent’s comment was a joke and you’re replying as if it went over your head.

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…

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?

Ah, good point. The tweet just mentioned the "Artemis computer", but according to https://www.tomshardware.com/software/microsoft-office/artem... it's a separate system and not navigation.

ESA? I wonder if the OS will have to confirm that the users are over 18.

Was the OS vibe-coded?

I'll bet someone's trying to run the New Outlook and classic Outlook at the same time.

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.

And connected to the network!

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.

Receiving airdrops on the moon is something to look forward to.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e7MP3SQWZDc

"Hey Artemis, we've got some great pictures of you, we'll try to airdrop them up to you!"

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.

The culture is correct, the new version of Outlook is hot garbage

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.

The new version of outlook is our only hope of escaping the IE 6 email renderer in classic outlook, sadly.

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.

People are probably still using Outlook Express

They also keep their own inboxes; emails downloaded to or sent from the old version are not visible on the new version.

They keep the classic version so people don't spontaneously throw a chair out a window.

Considering this is a spacecraft, that explains everything.

Even having one instance running should have been immediate whole of NASA five fire alarm type of situation.

I mean, it's even crazier that they are using Windows.

It's crazy to me that even NASA fell for the Exchange Online scam.

It was an astronaut's personal computing device (PCD)

"Standby Artemis, We have Ken in the simulator running scenarios"

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?

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.

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.

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...

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.

No they don’t. They’re our best and brightest, and they train for years at their one, important job, which is to use the system they’re given.

The mission of the astronauts on board is to test the damn Orion spacecraft in preparation for a human landing on the moon.

> NASA flight controller and instructor Robert Frost explained the reasoning plainly in a post on Quora (via Forbes). “A Windows laptop is used for the same reasons a majority of people that use computers use Windows. It is a system that people are already familiar with. Why make them learn a new operating system,” he reportedly wrote.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/technology/space-exploration/nasa-...

Maybe he should have designed the rest of the controls to look like the cockpit of 2003 Toyota Camry. It is a system that people are already familiar with. And actually reliable.

Toyota actually is involved in the Artemis program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Cruiser

That’s awesome. I’m assuming there’s zero chance it actually gets deployed (for a value of zero that is less than the chance a moon base is actually deployed, also assumed zero) but if it does, apparently the controls will look like this- https://sj.jst.go.jp/stories/2024/s0124-01p.html

If they were, they'd probably have skipped the mission.

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?

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.)

> 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.

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.

Quite true! These last years Ive been working at these companies where we have security audits from this very non-tech people, who have no idea what actually a CVEs is besides the "Severity" level.

Way early in my career the "Security auditors" were the cyber security experts that programmed since they were children and actually read and tested the code.

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."

The world where any unpatched system is a guaranteed botnet.

How do you mean that? In my Linux Laptops updates never happen unless I trigger them and nothing really changes even years after the last installation. You could boot it up and use whats there and just never update.

> 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.

Apollo's computer: Ran in 2 KiB memory! Miniaturized design before microprocessors became widely available! Rope memory for the ROM hand-woven by weaver ladies! Multitasking operating system kernel! Margaret Hamilton coined the term, and practice, of "software engineering" to develop the software for it! Houston had to debug it from the ground!

Artemis's computer: [theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm plays]

Someone, somewhere has an unwatched phone waiting for an authorisation code response...

Misleading.

Sounds like "computer driving Artemis spacecraft" while is is realy "some computer onboard Artemis spacecraft".

Very big difference.

Why is anyone still running Windows

Games. Also the enterprise features are pretty good.

They don't make programmers like Margaret Hamilton any more.

This is a known Outlook pain point it's notoriously sensitive to network configuration, especially on high-latency or intermittent connections. I have been using Emclient past two years for my business, works so much better

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...

> At least they are not travelling near the speed of light. That's a whole different can of worms.

Oh, they're building software and hardware for this anyway. The differences between earth clocks and moon clocks (CotS) would lead to large errors if you were to calculate distances. There was an article about this a while ago. Fascinating stuff.

As long as you're not in the shadow of some celestial body, the sun never goes away. So they'd need more nightlight saving than daylight saving.

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...

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".

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?

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.

A bad case of Three Stooges syndrome.

with all that money, they could have selected or designed a power efficient arm soc and installed a custom linux that was power efficient and built for stability. It would have been a net positive for everyone in FOSS.

Instead they slapped some winshit together and told the astronauts to deal with it...

at least they aren't manually shitting into bags for this mission.

Compare the cost and you will find the reason

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

That wasn't a Therac-25 by any chance?

Sorry. Couple decades too late.

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!

This situation reminds me of that one scene where a computer starts automatically updating, and the manager screams "F*CK MICROSOFT"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zpCOYkdvTQ

Every car has more reliable software onboard.

Taking ANY Microsoft products with you to space is proper Russian roulette, I mean, what could go wrong?

I didn't expect they are running Windows up there. Shouldn't be specialized and curated ... smthing else?

It's insane to me that microsoft licensing for large companies and mission-critical systems operators doesn't include a stripped down version of windows that really just provides the NT kernel and window system. Why on earth is MS telemetry running in space LOL

They likely can't separate that with their spaghetti code.

One's the "Metro" instance or whatever its called, the other is probably Win32.

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"

Due to the immense resources NASA has why would they ever deploy this bloated software on spaceships? Wouldnt it make more sense to fork some open source project and slim it down and adapt it perfectly to their needs?

For those nostalgic for different times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx7Lfh5SKUQ

May need triple redundancy for MS Outlook for the next mission.

They have also been having audio issues...that are very very VERYY reminiscent of Microsoft audio driver issues I run into all the time while gaming...

The real shocker is why would this craft spend energy on a Windows machine? I can honestly not think of a single sensible thing.

Well, I wasn't that worried for the astronauts before, but now that I know they're running windows, I'm not so sure.

Maybe there are just missing the latest Service Pack Update with Copilot integration on their machines? :-D

In space no one can hear you blue screen

At least it's no discord or ms teams.

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.

NNCP would have more sense there.

Using Windows in space? What?

why is a mail client needed in an onboard space computer at all?

To send email.

Until somebody remembers to read those mails, the mission will be already over and forgotten. LOL

I wonder if we could FOIA that inbox.

Microslop in space

Hmm redundecy?

Redundancy is a thing in aerospace engineering.

Something tells me this ain't the kind of redundancy aerospace engeneering really needs

Microslorbit

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.

Lmao why is it running Windows at all...

"Houston, we've got two problems"

Why on God's green earth is Windows running on the Artemis spaceship?

What should they use for email?

Alpine & Linux?

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.

Most probably it can’t connect to the server without running IT-mandated security software that runs only on Windows

FYI Alpine: https://github.com/realpine/alpine Not Alpine Linux, too late to edit to clarify

Literally anything else. In 1992 we did email on the command line with green screen terminals

Pine

I am still using mutt.

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..

Couldn't you delete or filter /var/spool/mail?

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.

Why do they “need” email access in the first place?! What the actual fuck.

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.

They're officers and researchers strapped into their seats for 10 days, what could they be doing that doesn't involve email

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.

wow imagine that, astronauts having to communicate with the outer world??? that's insane....

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...

Corresponding with family members? What do you want them to use, Teams?

Is this a serious question

They're not on God's green earth anymore, now are they?

It’s also blue, not green.

touche!

Because Microsoft is an American company, and Linux is some kind of a communist daycare center.

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."

computer virus

noun

    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.

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.

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.

“Guns don’t kill people, Windows does”?

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.

I'm not wrong on all points. Just the identity of the terrorist which shot down the airliner. But it's the same gang of habitual war criminals who all need to be Nuremburged.

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