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Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

121 points

by pyrophoenix

5 hours ago

| past

| 6 comments

| airbus.com

| HN

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addaon

52 minutes ago

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I’d really, really like to know what microcontroller family this was found on. Assuming that this is a safety processor (lockstep, ECC, etc) it suggests that ECC was insufficient for the level of bit flips they’re seeing — and if the concern is data corruption, not unintended restart, it means it’s enough flips in one word to be undetectable. The environment they’re operating in isn’t that different from everyone else, so unless they ate some margin elsewhere (bad voltage corner or something), this can definitely be relevant to others. Also would be interesting to know if it’s NVM or SRAM that’s effected.

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qaq

48 minutes ago

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Has BoFesc vibes "It's friday, so I get into work early, before lunch even. The phone rings. Shit!

I turn the page on the excuse sheet. "SOLAR FLARES" stares out at me. I'd better read up on that..."

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owenthejumper

16 minutes ago

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A friend works at Jetblue. They are scrambling hard to do the updates.

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op00to

1 hour ago

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Solar radiation like solar wind, or sunlight? They don’t say.

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mr_toad

1 hour ago

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“Analysis of a recent event”

I presume they mean a Coronal Mass Ejection.

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fwip

45 minutes ago

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I feel like the event was something that happened to a plane. That said, I wouldn't think sunlight would be penetrating to the chips running the plane.

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dtagames

38 minutes ago

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Gamma rays penetrate everything and have definitely been known to disrupt computer circuits.

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awesome_dude

20 minutes ago

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> The grounding of Airbus A320neo aircraft around the world can be traced back to an incident on a JetBlue flight operating a Cancun to New Jersey service on 30 October.

> At least 15 passengers were injured and taken to the hospital after a sudden drop in altitude on the flight from Mexico was forced to make an emergency landing in Florida, US aviation officials said at the time.

> The Thursday flight from Cancun was headed to Newark, New Jersey, when the altitude dropped, leading to the diversion to Tampa International Airport, the US Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

> Pilots reported “a flight control issue” and described injuries including a possible “laceration in the head,” according to air traffic audio recorded by LiveATC.net.

> Medical personnel met the passengers and crew on the ground at the airport. Between 15 and 20 people were taken to hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, said Vivian Shedd, a spokesperson for Tampa Fire Rescue.

> Pablo Rojas, a Miami-based attorney who specialises in aviation law, said a “flight control issue” indicated that the aircraft wasn't responding to the pilots.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/360903363/what-happened-fligh...

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bparsons

35 minutes ago

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There was a very large CME ten days ago. The NOAA scale had predicted a high likelihood of disruptions, and had specifically suggested that spacecraft and high altitude aircraft could be impacted.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

https://kauai.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/CMEscoreboard/prediction/de...

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jMyles

5 hours ago

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This is one of the rare cases where, IMO, it makes sense to use a modified title as you've done here.

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ChrisArchitect

5 hours ago

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More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46082296