The HiRISE project has developed a fairly significant amount of software. I’ve been privileged to play a part in that development, which continues even as we get deeper into the primary mission. So, rather than space science or operations, this post will discuss one of the nittier, grittier aspects of our work.

The processing pipelines have been introduced in earlier entries. Thanks to the efforts of HiRISE developers (mostly before my time with the project) these have provided a very solid foundation for our automated ground data system. There has been very little need for trouble-shooting or fine-tuning of the core software.

One issue that did come up earlier in PSP however was a strange failure that happened periodically, though not predictably. If you are a programmer, there is nothing so dreadful as a bizarre, non-repeatable bug… not counting Monday morning meetings, of course.

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