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from the not-quite-vorsprung-durch-technik dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr.
Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were "safely in orbit." The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said.
However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail.
As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.
The three-satellite constellation known as SARah—the SAR is a reference to the synthetic aperture radar capability of the satellites—was ordered in 2013 at a cost of $800 million. The first of the three satellites, SARah 1, launched in June 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was built by Airbus in southern Germany, and it has since gone into operation without any problems.
[...] This new constellation was intended to replace an aging fleet of similar, though less capable, satellites known as SAR-Lupe. This five-satellite constellation launched nearly two decades ago.
According to the Der Spiegel report, the Bundeswehr says the two SARah satellites built by OHB remain the property of the German company and would only be turned over to the military once they were operational. As a result, the military says OHB will be responsible for building two replacement satellites.
[...] the German publication says that its sources indicated OHB did not fully test the functionality and deployment of the satellite antennas on the ground. This could not be confirmed.
This setback comes as OHB is attempting to complete a deal to go private—the investment firm KKR is planning to acquire the German space company. OHB officials said they initiated the effort to go private late last year because public markets had "structurally undervalued" the company.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 08 2024, @04:27AM
"When you hear about people who have done truly extraordinary things, a lot of them are described as really pleasant people to be around, and those social skills helped them accomplish their goals. "
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That was also my experience working at that aerospace company. I worked with...er, under, these people who basically booted the company to be a major player... invariably, exactly as you describe, very pleasant people. All of them highly experienced people knowing exactly what we needed to do. We weren't there to compete against each other. We we're there to build something. All of us. It was more like the ,"Barn Raising" country folk would do. Or maybe a "Union Apprenticeship". I had several years of their tutelage in all sorts of the unusual things the company made. The most educational thing for me is they would design something.
Then Build it.
It would invariably have a few surprises in it as anything on its first try after birth invariably does. The designer shares all schematics and code. This is what it's supposed to do. Why isn't it doing it? He is now working on the design of another thing in the works. He leaves me with anything I want. The whole team does. First thing we learn is to share expertise. If I don't know ask and someone will show me, conversely if I can help someone else do so!
So I know both analog and digital pretty well coming from a oilfield/refinery background. I end up with the interface control CPU and display interface boards. Another new guy got the analog boards. Yet another got the digital signal processor board. Just the hardware boards...about 20 of us. Those I mentioned were the two fellow newbies I worked closest with. There were quite a few other people...to find every one of them has a crucial role to play. Any one of us failing to do our thing would make things very hard for everyone else. So we were well incentivized to work together and help each other out. This went for the entire company, everyone. A lot of " management by walking around". I never had to do status reports. My "boss" did all that drudgy paperwork. I didn't envy him his job even though his pay grade was higher. I was just where I wanted to be.
Being helpful is much appreciated! I want special software written just to exercise some circuit? Somebody would do that for me, as well as teach me how to code it. That's how I learned 68000 assembler and C.
Now not only can I write little snippets to test parts of my boards, I can also make test jigs and software to help that analog and the DSP guy verify his boards. He had me send frames of data to his boards over and over, and he would see if his boards were acting as expected.
Of course the software guys were in on this too, as they were constantly verifying their system code. We were always building little test jigs to mimic parts of the big system to exercise individual interfaces.
I find some miswires. I keep butchering the proto board to implement my discoveries. Highly skilled techs do it, and even show me how they do it... but I had just as soon they do it as it required specialized tools that were some of them's personal property. Tools like dentists use.
Ok, after a lot of chitchat with the original designer and cohorts, it's now doing exactly what we intended it to do, and I now know everything in my part of the system, and the purpose of every part, every line of code that runs my interfaces. As well as the people who conceived it. I never did quite understand what the DSP guy was doing, but was convinced he did.
Now I get to go to another guy who's thing is PCB layout on a huge, terribly expensive, PCB layout system, and implement all the updates. We sit side by side. I find it is so easy to design stuff on that machine that's impossible to make! Well, that's why he's in the cockpit, not me. Piece by piece we correct everything in such a manner that when he prepares the PCB manufacturing files ( The Gerbers ), they will accurately tell the machines in PCB fabrication.
I now send the Gerbers to manufacturing.
I get the new PCB back. I go over it to make sure that all the changes I did were implemented, and nothing else got changed in the process.
Ok..send the board and parts list to manufacturing, where they put the parts on ( we had a buyer, almost like a librarian) who kept track of where all the parts are. I got to know him well! )
I get my board back in a week or so...all populated, plug it in, and now it works. The other people who had other assemblies are doing the same. We had a helluva lot of interaction as we shuffled things around from the proof-of-concept prototype system to the production model prototype "gold cards". Others knew enough about my board to help me, and I knew enough about the boards I am interfacing to , to help others...so we all finished about the same time...within a couple days or so. We get it working. 100 or so of us. Designers. Engineers. Techs. Buyers. PCB guys. Assemblers. The Customer! He has been there all along, as nobody wants to waste a lot of time barking up the wrong tree. The Customer had to justify our time and approvals on our cost-plus financial side...and see for himself what the taxpayers were getting for their dollar. It was quite open to see.
Everybody is happy with it. Nobody is uneasy about some borderline thing that may cause problems.
We then had a celebratory party when the customer took delivery if what we made for him.
Talk about being proud! I was one tiny part of it, and we made a significant product that was highly needed. Things like that is what made what we did worth whatever it took to make it happen. Working with such people made it quite difficult to go on vacation. I was already having the time of my life.
And that's the way it was.
I know...got long winded here. But maybe in the future, some business student may dig this up to see an account of what working conditions were like in the 60's to 80's timeframe. It changed, drastically for me. In the 90's when the company adopted competitive merit-based evaluation paradigms, where we tried to individually outshine our fellow team players in lieu of pursuing our dreams of building things.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]