frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Artemis II: Christina Koch's PCD Failure

4•robgibbons•1h ago
Early in the Artemis 2 Mission, Christina Koch's PCD (personal computing device, essentially a Surface tablet) completely failed to power on, and Houston had her attempt to perform a hard reset (hold down the power button, and the volume up button) several times, later having her remove the SD card and try again, at one point referring to last ditch efforts to get it running as a "hail-mary."

These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and this equipment failure led to the crew having to share three working PCDs between the four of them for all of their work for the entire remaining duration of the mission. They were able to make this configuration work, albeit not without complications. Their PCDs were their direct means of tracking their jobs, documenting their work, running checklists, looking up procedures, etc. During the lunar fly-by in particular, while they were doing photography of their various lunar targets, they said that they had to swap out SD cards as they rotated between window duty every so often. Two of them kept their own PCD, and the other two shared one. Houston originally asked that they try to use separate directories with their initials to track their work in case they were sharing SDs.

It's obvious that they were able to make things work, but this issue also complicated their operational logistics, and it's funny that it wasn't reported on at all. If you look up anything related to technical glitches or equipment failures on the Artemis II mission, it's all about Outlook and the toilet. Nothing about the complete failure of the PCD. No reports on this, not even a single blog post I can find.

Comments

g4cg54g54•1h ago
not to mention that "the outlook failure" seems to have been a layer 8 problem?

(think i picked up some line about not being aware how to use it in offline mode / calling this out as an "error" while it was the expected configuration at the time)

and the toilet problem being as banal as "well, you need to wait for the green ready light to turn on..." (and this just taking a bit longer than expected on the first go)

ggm•29m ago
At the cost of complexity, should they have had platform diversity, and so e.g. a small iPad or an Android tablet?

Or .. a spare? I guess the "spare" here was "use somebody else's"

I hope they selected diverse production runs. I have been exposed to "yea, that generation of thinkpad had bad PSU, sorry" problems in the past.

Clinical trial shows gene editing works for β-Thalassaemia, too

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/clinical-trial-shows-gene-editing-works-for-%ce%b2-thalas...
1•bryanrasmussen•2m ago•0 comments

Show HW: Implementing denoising diffusion probabilistic models from scratch

https://github.com/aldipiroli/ddpm_from_scratch
1•tgnk2341•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bad Apple (Oscilloscope-Like) – one stroke per frame

https://bad-apple-on-oscilloscope.pages.dev/
1•araniwa•7m ago•1 comments

The Paper Computer

https://jsomers.net/blog/the-paper-computer
1•jsomers•11m ago•0 comments

No Degree, $155K Pay: Trump's FAA Is Recruiting Gamers as Air Traffic Controller

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/faa-recruits-gamers-air-traffic-control-1791239
2•onemoresoop•17m ago•0 comments

Altman Shooters Are Paid Actors

https://twitter.com/boneGPT/status/2043550790095134846
2•fakeshoot•22m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Insta, X, Reddit or HN?

1•wasimsk•22m ago•0 comments

What web browser do you use?

1•nicp•22m ago•2 comments

Reconciling Two UC Berkeleys – The Soapbox

https://www.dailycal.org/opinion/the_soapbox/reconciling-two-uc-berkeleys/article_0fe38fc6-1399-4...
2•paulpauper•24m ago•1 comments

My Dialogue with Jonathan Zittrain

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/04/my-dialogue-with-jonathan-zittrain.html
2•paulpauper•26m ago•0 comments

Your Single Use iPhone [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG-lLt5X3Rs
3•Klaster_1•34m ago•0 comments

A unified Go SDK for working with large language models

https://github.com/aarock1234/ai
1•abdelsabbah•34m ago•1 comments

Lightweight internet radio management tool

https://github.com/tchovi/AirBoneRadio
1•Indigenism•37m ago•1 comments

Code Review Is the New Bottleneck for Engineering Teams

https://newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/code-review-is-the-new-bottleneck
1•gpi•38m ago•0 comments

End of the Orban Era

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-12/end-of-the-orban-era-the-party-is-just-startin...
2•dlx•40m ago•1 comments

Self-Improving AI Agent

https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
1•granto•40m ago•0 comments

Jyf

2•ramzidddinq•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cryptr a shell utility for encrypting and decrypting files with OpenSSL

https://github.com/nodesocket/cryptr
1•nodesocket•43m ago•0 comments

A Canonical Generalization of OBDD

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05537
1•luu•43m ago•0 comments

The Expensive Anxiety of AI

https://aarils.com/personal/the-expensive-anxiety-of-ai
2•bridgettegraham•44m ago•0 comments

How are you reducing LLM token costs for async workflows?

https://github.com/parallem-ai/parallem
1•alexliu79•55m ago•1 comments

Balsamiq AI

https://balsamiq.com/product/ai/
1•ilt•58m ago•0 comments

StackTrove: Encrypted local registry for all your side projects

https://github.com/sennaBruno/stacktrove
1•essieli•1h ago•0 comments

Justin Sun Accuses Trump's WLFI Cryptocurrency of Hiding Wallet Freeze Function

https://beincrypto.com/justin-sun-slams-world-liberty-financials-blacklist-feature/
3•jrflowers•1h ago•0 comments

'The gravest crime against humanity': What does the UN vote on slavery mean?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rxqng5pyno
3•gpi•1h ago•0 comments

IBM AP-101 general-purpose computer [pdf]

https://gandalfddi.z19.web.core.windows.net/Shuttle/IBM%20AP-101S%20General%20Purpose%20Computer%...
2•__patchbit__•1h ago•0 comments

Your Harness, Your Memory

https://blog.langchain.com/your-harness-your-memory/
3•tanelpoder•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tokemon – monitor token use with out refreshing 27 browser tabs

https://github.com/rvantonder/tokemon
1•rvttt•1h ago•0 comments

Overcoming Informational Risk

https://bencornia.com/blog/overcoming-informational-risk
1•bencornia•1h ago•0 comments

Best AI coding interview assistant in 2026

https://www.linkjob.ai/interview-questions/ai-coding-interview-assistant/
1•Silviaaa•1h ago•1 comments