NASA officials have acknowledged that a long-term fix is
needed to build safe mission system software systems, and the
space agency's subsequent efforts may, ultimately, help all IT
managers.
The Columbia space shuttle crash earlier this month brought
renewed attention to the highly complex computer systems and
software used by NASA. It was "an important watershed event" that
prompted the agency to broaden outreach efforts to improve software
design, said Henry McDonald, who headed NASA's Ames Research Center
in California until last November.
NASA played a leading role in last year's creation of the
Sustainable Computing Consortium (SCC), which includes companies
such as Federal Express, Pfizer, Microsoft and Oracle.
SCC, which is based at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
creates "high-dependability" software for systems that tolerate
hardware faults well, maintain a high level of security during
attacks and are always available.
