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Initiated during the 90s, the international space probes to comet program – Rosetta – was finally launched to space in 2004. Ten years and more than 6 billion kilometers later, we finally enjoy the results gathered from space.
However, I would like to draw your attention to one point regarding Rosetta. As you’d expect, this little robot abounds with IT devices and pieces of codes. But since the program started in the 90s and the probe took off in 2004, indeed all the technologies and solutions used for that conquest mission are more than 10 years old. So let’s figure out that today, all the equipment up there we pilot from earth are based on technologies from previous décades! It is common to say that one single year in IT-time-zone means centuries. How facetious is that European and US space agency technical teams are currently experimenting out-of-disk-space issues with Philae (Rosetta’s child). During the 90s, very lucky were the ones that got tens of GB at their disposal. Add the fact that size and weight are crucial points to conquer space, comets and planets… Today a 256GB tiny USB stick is available for less than 100€. We are so excited to follow Rosetta’s innovative adventure, while our favorite space robot comes from pre-history!
What a big challenge for developers and automation gurus! What a big challenge for innovative companies like Sogeti! We must create systems that will be able to adapt themselves to satisfy needs we don’t even know about today. Let’s dream about the Theory Of Evolution even for artificial systems.
(picture taken from penningtonplanetarium.wordpress.com)
