Ariane 5 failure

Ariane 5 is a European heavy-lift launch vehicle that is part of the Ariane rocket family, an expendable launch system designed by the French government space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES).

1. Ariane 5 Failure

2. As a Programming Student,
Do you ever think how much damage a
floating point error can do?

3. Introduction to system
●On 4 June 1996, the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 launcher ended in a failure.
●Only about 40 seconds after initiation of the flight sequence, at an altitude of about
3700 m, the launcher veered off its flight path, broke up and exploded.

4. Who owns (Country/Organization
etc)
●Ariane 5 rockets are manufactured under the authority of the
European Space Agency (ESA) and
●The French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.

5. When it was
developed
●June,1996
●manufactured under the authority of
the European Space Agency (ESA)
and the French space agency
●It is used to deliver payloads.

6. What is the purpose?
●It is used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or low Earth orbit
(LEO).
●A European rocket designed to launch commercial payloads(e.g communication
satellites etc ) in to Earth orbit.

7. Explain disaster or failure
●Approximately 37 seconds after a successful lift-off,the Ariane 5
launcher lost control.
●Incorrect control signals were sent to the engines and these swivelled
so that unsustainable stress were imposed on the rocket.
●It started to break up and was destroyed by ground controllers.
●The system failure was a direct result of a software failure.However,it
was symptomatic of a more general systems validation failure

8. Lessons learned from Ariane 5 Failure
●Do not run on critical systems unless the software is really necessary.
●Examine what the system should and should not do.
●Don’t have a default exception handling response which is system shutdown
in systems that have no fail-safe state
●Whenever possible,use real equipment and not simulations.
●Improve the review process to include external participants.

9. Cost of failure
●The disastrous launch cost approximately
$370m, led to a public inquiry, and
through the destruction of the rocket's
payload, delayed scientific research into
workings of the Earth's magnetosphere
for almost 4 years.

●The Ariane 5 launch is widely
acknowledged as one of the most
expensive software failures in history.

10. Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=5tJPXYA0Nec

13. Group Members

A.K.P.J. Dasunika TG/2017/240
S.D.S.Chalaka TG/2017/269
N.I.U.Hewapathirana TG/2017/272
M.D.W.H.Sewwandi TG/2017/278