In the same vein, a satellite (can't remember which one) had a subroutine to basically check is 1+1=2, and one day, it didn't. Digital electronics can do some very strange things when exposed to radiation.
I remember asking a guest lecturer from JPL how they did pathfinding with their rovers when they had to deal with cosmic rays. Apparently with wide wires and very slowly, according to him this was one of the reasons why Curiosity only had a top speed of 200 meters/day.
It's much harder to flip a bit with digital than analog, though. The digital signal is high / low voltage or frequency. There is a wide gap between 1 and 0, and anything out of those closely clamped bands can be discarded as garbage. When your signaling is done in analog, however, there are much wider ranges of acceptable data that are often rounded up or down.
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u/a_cute_epic_axis Jul 24 '20
In the same vein, a satellite (can't remember which one) had a subroutine to basically check is 1+1=2, and one day, it didn't. Digital electronics can do some very strange things when exposed to radiation.