pennstatephil

Great question! We developed the flight software in C++, and the drivers in C. The flight software was well established and flown on multiple missions before Juno/GRAIL, so it was more customizing the existing system for our mission. If you're looking to work on embedded systems, C++ is a great place to start. I also have done a lot of work in Java since. I sincerely believe that as long as you learn good fundamentals, you can learn any syntax.

Don't be afraid to ask for extra help on things you don't understand. I learned some of my best stuff at office hours and study sessions. Don't sweat the syntax as much as the core concepts and data structures. Syntax will change, but "if"s and "loop"s are in every language.

I worked for Lockheed Martin for a while afterwards, but after sequestration, my program got cut and I decided to do commercial software. I consulted for a couple years, and am now working for an ecommerce/e-learning startup here in Denver called Craftsy. It's one of the things I love most about software engineering, you can be in pretty much any industry.

There are very many backups and redundancies. The spacecraft is "two sided", there's redundant hardware on each side, and 2 copies of the flight software on each side (4 total). The system is constantly running checksums since Jupiter's magnetic field is so strong, and the possibilities of bit flips is very high. If a copy doesn't pass the checksum, it's marked bad, and overwritten with a good copy.

If hardware or software fails on one site, it autonomously reports the fault and fails over to the other side. This is primarily the software I worked on (the detection and handling of faults). There are also redundant paths, for example an "A" and "B" path to the communications arrays, so if a path fails, it's marked bad, and fails over to the alternate path.

Plus the whole thing is in a titanium vault :)

She's built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro!