Interview with cosmonautics popularizer, ballistic programmer Anton Gromov
A series of interviews with speakers at the DUMP conference continues with a conversation with Anton Gromov, a ballistic programmer at Dauria Aerospace, the author of the Sea of ​​Clarity project, the permanent host of SpaceX launches, and a cosmonautics promoter. Anton spoke about programming satellites, about the state of private astronautics in Russia, and about what work for programmers is in astronautics.
Anton, you have an unusual position - a ballistic programmer. Could you tell us in more detail what ballistic programmers are doing? What projects are you working on now?
Honestly, I don’t know more people who have a job called that way :) Basically, I’m currently programming onboard software for our next companion. In addition, sometimes I solve ballistic problems when they appear, but only, let's say, of small and medium complexity, because my main task is programming.
')
You work in a private space company, Dauria Aerospace. How did you get there? How is everything in Dauria Aerospace? How is your work organized?
Do not believe it, I sent a resume and passed the interview! By that moment I already knew from the company a couple of people according to the project of a lunar satellite , in which I deal with ballistics. There my task was to calculate the stable low orbit of the moon.
Compared to other enterprises in the space industry, we have a rather young team. The backbone of the team was formed 6-7 years ago from industry experts. As for my work, the tasks, of course, are set very clearly, but there is a lot of room for taking initiative and expanding the area of ​​responsibility, which I like very much here. The company is still small, and this compares favorably with the ossified enterprises of our space industry.
What technologies does Dauria Aerospace use? What stack? What special tools do you use?
Oh, there are much more technology and tools than IT, where I come from. On the satellite, it is necessary to calculate the design, electrical circuit, strength, magnetism, temperature interactions, ballistics, radio, optics. For all this, of course, their tools. As for pure on-board software programming, we limit ourselves to the C + C POSIX library + gcc. For ballistics, I mainly use Python, sometimes in combination with NASA's script language GMAT.
Are there any “in production” bugs in space? If not, how do you achieve this quality? If so, what happens then?
Everywhere there are bugs in production: (One of the well-known examples is the first launch of the European Ariane 5 rocket. It used part of the control system from the previous Ariane 4 rocket. In one place, the variable responsible for horizontal acceleration was transferred from double (64 bit) to short int (16 bit). On the Ariane 4, the horizontal acceleration fit into both types of frames, so there were no range checks on type casting.
I must say that it was not the forgetfulness or carelessness of the developers, but the optimization of the efficiency of the code, which in space technology has to work on a much slower hardware. But Ariane 5 was designed differently, it had more acceleration, and at the 39th second of the flight it did not fit into 16 integer bits. There was an exception that was not adequately handled, the rocket began to drastically change its orientation and was destroyed by aerodynamic forces. For some reason, this part of the control system was not tested in conjunction with other systems, otherwise the error would have been detected in advance.
Another, perhaps more famous example was the recent launch from the East. The headlines were full of “confused cosmodromes”, but in fact, if I understood correctly, the control system code simply did not check which direction to turn (instead of turning 2 degrees, the turn to 362 was performed). At other cosmodromes, this rotation worked as it should, but before launching from Vostochny, again, they did not carry out comprehensive tests of all systems together, only individual systems or individual bundles were checked.
In addition, two years ago, the Japanese lost a steep orbital telescope due to a software error, and, of course, the list goes on. This is not entirely programming, but not to mention the loss of the American Mars satellite Mars Climate Orbiter due to the fact that Lockheed Martin transmitted data to control it in feet and inches, while NASA has long used the metric system.
In a word, in the overwhelming majority of cases, problems arise precisely at the junction of various areas of responsibility. And within the framework of one system, intensive tests allow to avoid mistakes.
If it's not a secret, what are the salaries of programmers in the space field?
Various. On average, the hospital is probably smaller than in IT, and there is not much freelancing here.
What is the job for programmers in space? What kind of specialists do space industry need now?
If we are talking about Russia, in addition to our company, now we are making a new manned ship, new missiles (Angara and Soyuz 5), new satellites, lunar landing stations, a Martian landing platform for ExoMars. For all these systems, both on-board software and ground-based software are needed, so in general there is something to program. In addition, there is a need for testers who are familiar with the specifics of space software, because often the same commands that write code deal with testing.
You designed, assembled, and launched three private satellites into orbit. Did you take part in their development? Tell me more about it?
No, I am in Dauria for just half a year, but I actively learn from the experience gained by the company in these projects. Unfortunately, the last two vehicles could not be tested in flight due to an emergency situation when it was launched into orbit. However, during the development and creation of the apparatus, of course, they did a great job, the results and experience of which can be used further.
From the outside, it seems that Russian private astronautics is quite difficult to develop. This is true? In your opinion, what prevents the development of private astronautics in Russia? Will we have our own SpaceX?
It can be difficult, yes. Here, I'd rather just let you read the Roscosmos article against private traders: where 300 million flew away , everything is clear from it. The main problem is that almost any private space company is perceived as a competitor to Roskosmos, which already has all the necessary competencies without it.
As for SpaceX: in this, the United States, on the contrary, relied on private traders, thus spurring the market on and allowing it to develop. The first steps and the first significant investments in SpaceX were made by individuals anyway, and when they showed NASA with their money that they could, they were given a contract.
What to expect from private space companies in the near future? What projects are you planning to launch?
This year we are planning to launch our satellite Auriga, it will photograph the Earth at a resolution of up to 2.8 meters per pixel. This is a very good indicator for these sizes and masses: the satellite is about a microwave. This will be a demonstration mission, after which it will be possible to create an entire grouping of such devices. In addition, we are actively working on the project Atom geostationary platform.
If about other companies, then in Russia there are a couple of startups with the goal of building a light rocket for the international market. While they are relatively early stages, but I hope they will develop.
In the west, the private astronautics is on a huge rise. In addition to several rocket startups with significant success, there are many exclusively satellite-building companies, including Planet, which recently announced that it takes pictures of the entire land surface every day. There are OneWeb and SpaceX, which for a couple want to launch 15,000 satellites of the orbital Internet, and many others.
You are one of the popularizers of astronautics in Russia. How and why did you start doing this?
Because I love space and I love to talk about it, everything is pretty simple. I took up the lunar satellite ballistics, then made a lecture on ballistics, then a few more lectures. At the end of 2015, I began broadcasting Falcon 9 rocket launches. Just my first broadcast came at the first successful landing stage in history. There were a lot of people who were inspired by the success of SpaceX, and far from all of them know English, so I still have these broadcasts. And in the summer of 2017, the Sea of ​​Clarity educational channel began on YouTube, this is now my main promotional project. Unfortunately, it is not possible to devote as much time to it as we would like, but there are big plans.
Tell me more about your projects, please? Do you feel that interest in this topic is growing?
In addition to working in Dauria, I do the already mentioned channel on YouTube, I am already conducting the already mentioned Russian-language broadcasts of SpaceX launches , I occasionally give lectures, I am in charge of ballistics in the project of the moon satellite, which I also already mentioned. By the way, now we are just completing the next iteration of the advance project. Another couple of projects so far only in the plans or at the stage of evaluation of ideas.
Perhaps Habr's audience will be interested in another of my projects - the exact model / simulator of the Solar System on JS. It will soon be available to all ever launched devices (more than 40,000), you can view all this, create your own trajectories, play with them, and a lot of plans. The project is being done solely on a volunteer basis, and now it has not even reached the stage of the alpha version, but is available at urbain.ru . If it is interesting to help someone, then you can study the list of plans, and I can write to telegrams.
As for public interest in the topic of space, it is quite difficult for me to evaluate it, because my whole life consists entirely of it. I am glad that space projects on crowdfunding collect normal amounts (the last project at the moment is completed on March 29).
The other day I was traveling in a space car in the Moscow subway, and in a month the famous Space Pavilion at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements should open. In St. Petersburg, a new large planetarium has opened, in the regions, too, they are slowly developing the advance of space to the masses, it pleases.
On April 13, in Yekaterinburg, Anton will speak at the DUMP conference in the Science section. Anton will tell you which satellites will be launched in the near future, who will produce them and what missiles and technologies are being developed to launch them into orbit.
Thanks to our partners, who make the conference possible: the general partner - Sberbank-Technology companies, conference partners: SKB Kontur , Naumen , Tinkoff.ru , ProSoft Sistems , Very Interesting , Skb_Lab .
Anton, you have an unusual position - a ballistic programmer. Could you tell us in more detail what ballistic programmers are doing? What projects are you working on now?
Honestly, I don’t know more people who have a job called that way :) Basically, I’m currently programming onboard software for our next companion. In addition, sometimes I solve ballistic problems when they appear, but only, let's say, of small and medium complexity, because my main task is programming.
')
You work in a private space company, Dauria Aerospace. How did you get there? How is everything in Dauria Aerospace? How is your work organized?
Do not believe it, I sent a resume and passed the interview! By that moment I already knew from the company a couple of people according to the project of a lunar satellite , in which I deal with ballistics. There my task was to calculate the stable low orbit of the moon.
Compared to other enterprises in the space industry, we have a rather young team. The backbone of the team was formed 6-7 years ago from industry experts. As for my work, the tasks, of course, are set very clearly, but there is a lot of room for taking initiative and expanding the area of ​​responsibility, which I like very much here. The company is still small, and this compares favorably with the ossified enterprises of our space industry.
What technologies does Dauria Aerospace use? What stack? What special tools do you use?
Oh, there are much more technology and tools than IT, where I come from. On the satellite, it is necessary to calculate the design, electrical circuit, strength, magnetism, temperature interactions, ballistics, radio, optics. For all this, of course, their tools. As for pure on-board software programming, we limit ourselves to the C + C POSIX library + gcc. For ballistics, I mainly use Python, sometimes in combination with NASA's script language GMAT.
Are there any “in production” bugs in space? If not, how do you achieve this quality? If so, what happens then?
Everywhere there are bugs in production: (One of the well-known examples is the first launch of the European Ariane 5 rocket. It used part of the control system from the previous Ariane 4 rocket. In one place, the variable responsible for horizontal acceleration was transferred from double (64 bit) to short int (16 bit). On the Ariane 4, the horizontal acceleration fit into both types of frames, so there were no range checks on type casting.
I must say that it was not the forgetfulness or carelessness of the developers, but the optimization of the efficiency of the code, which in space technology has to work on a much slower hardware. But Ariane 5 was designed differently, it had more acceleration, and at the 39th second of the flight it did not fit into 16 integer bits. There was an exception that was not adequately handled, the rocket began to drastically change its orientation and was destroyed by aerodynamic forces. For some reason, this part of the control system was not tested in conjunction with other systems, otherwise the error would have been detected in advance.
Another, perhaps more famous example was the recent launch from the East. The headlines were full of “confused cosmodromes”, but in fact, if I understood correctly, the control system code simply did not check which direction to turn (instead of turning 2 degrees, the turn to 362 was performed). At other cosmodromes, this rotation worked as it should, but before launching from Vostochny, again, they did not carry out comprehensive tests of all systems together, only individual systems or individual bundles were checked.
In addition, two years ago, the Japanese lost a steep orbital telescope due to a software error, and, of course, the list goes on. This is not entirely programming, but not to mention the loss of the American Mars satellite Mars Climate Orbiter due to the fact that Lockheed Martin transmitted data to control it in feet and inches, while NASA has long used the metric system.
In a word, in the overwhelming majority of cases, problems arise precisely at the junction of various areas of responsibility. And within the framework of one system, intensive tests allow to avoid mistakes.
If it's not a secret, what are the salaries of programmers in the space field?
Various. On average, the hospital is probably smaller than in IT, and there is not much freelancing here.
What is the job for programmers in space? What kind of specialists do space industry need now?
If we are talking about Russia, in addition to our company, now we are making a new manned ship, new missiles (Angara and Soyuz 5), new satellites, lunar landing stations, a Martian landing platform for ExoMars. For all these systems, both on-board software and ground-based software are needed, so in general there is something to program. In addition, there is a need for testers who are familiar with the specifics of space software, because often the same commands that write code deal with testing.
You designed, assembled, and launched three private satellites into orbit. Did you take part in their development? Tell me more about it?
No, I am in Dauria for just half a year, but I actively learn from the experience gained by the company in these projects. Unfortunately, the last two vehicles could not be tested in flight due to an emergency situation when it was launched into orbit. However, during the development and creation of the apparatus, of course, they did a great job, the results and experience of which can be used further.
From the outside, it seems that Russian private astronautics is quite difficult to develop. This is true? In your opinion, what prevents the development of private astronautics in Russia? Will we have our own SpaceX?
It can be difficult, yes. Here, I'd rather just let you read the Roscosmos article against private traders: where 300 million flew away , everything is clear from it. The main problem is that almost any private space company is perceived as a competitor to Roskosmos, which already has all the necessary competencies without it.
As for SpaceX: in this, the United States, on the contrary, relied on private traders, thus spurring the market on and allowing it to develop. The first steps and the first significant investments in SpaceX were made by individuals anyway, and when they showed NASA with their money that they could, they were given a contract.
What to expect from private space companies in the near future? What projects are you planning to launch?
This year we are planning to launch our satellite Auriga, it will photograph the Earth at a resolution of up to 2.8 meters per pixel. This is a very good indicator for these sizes and masses: the satellite is about a microwave. This will be a demonstration mission, after which it will be possible to create an entire grouping of such devices. In addition, we are actively working on the project Atom geostationary platform.
If about other companies, then in Russia there are a couple of startups with the goal of building a light rocket for the international market. While they are relatively early stages, but I hope they will develop.
In the west, the private astronautics is on a huge rise. In addition to several rocket startups with significant success, there are many exclusively satellite-building companies, including Planet, which recently announced that it takes pictures of the entire land surface every day. There are OneWeb and SpaceX, which for a couple want to launch 15,000 satellites of the orbital Internet, and many others.
You are one of the popularizers of astronautics in Russia. How and why did you start doing this?
Because I love space and I love to talk about it, everything is pretty simple. I took up the lunar satellite ballistics, then made a lecture on ballistics, then a few more lectures. At the end of 2015, I began broadcasting Falcon 9 rocket launches. Just my first broadcast came at the first successful landing stage in history. There were a lot of people who were inspired by the success of SpaceX, and far from all of them know English, so I still have these broadcasts. And in the summer of 2017, the Sea of ​​Clarity educational channel began on YouTube, this is now my main promotional project. Unfortunately, it is not possible to devote as much time to it as we would like, but there are big plans.
Tell me more about your projects, please? Do you feel that interest in this topic is growing?
In addition to working in Dauria, I do the already mentioned channel on YouTube, I am already conducting the already mentioned Russian-language broadcasts of SpaceX launches , I occasionally give lectures, I am in charge of ballistics in the project of the moon satellite, which I also already mentioned. By the way, now we are just completing the next iteration of the advance project. Another couple of projects so far only in the plans or at the stage of evaluation of ideas.
Perhaps Habr's audience will be interested in another of my projects - the exact model / simulator of the Solar System on JS. It will soon be available to all ever launched devices (more than 40,000), you can view all this, create your own trajectories, play with them, and a lot of plans. The project is being done solely on a volunteer basis, and now it has not even reached the stage of the alpha version, but is available at urbain.ru . If it is interesting to help someone, then you can study the list of plans, and I can write to telegrams.
As for public interest in the topic of space, it is quite difficult for me to evaluate it, because my whole life consists entirely of it. I am glad that space projects on crowdfunding collect normal amounts (the last project at the moment is completed on March 29).
The other day I was traveling in a space car in the Moscow subway, and in a month the famous Space Pavilion at the Exhibition of Economic Achievements should open. In St. Petersburg, a new large planetarium has opened, in the regions, too, they are slowly developing the advance of space to the masses, it pleases.
On April 13, in Yekaterinburg, Anton will speak at the DUMP conference in the Science section. Anton will tell you which satellites will be launched in the near future, who will produce them and what missiles and technologies are being developed to launch them into orbit.
Thanks to our partners, who make the conference possible: the general partner - Sberbank-Technology companies, conference partners: SKB Kontur , Naumen , Tinkoff.ru , ProSoft Sistems , Very Interesting , Skb_Lab .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/352124/
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