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NASA developer secures way to the stars


By Jeff Feinman
May 1, 2009 —  (Page 1 of 3)
When Gerard Holzmann arrives at work, he passes by assembly facilities for putting spacecraft together. He says hello to scientists working with vacuum chambers, which test mechanical devices that operate in outer space. He takes a peek into the “dark room,” an observation room where all active spacecraft are tracked and monitored. It is easy for him to explore his space at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

“There’s lots of very interesting stuff to be seen here,” Holzmann said. “The perspective on writing software changes very quickly if you imagine, ‘Well, maybe your life is at stake if that software malfunctions,’ like if the software were to go into your car or you have to fly on a mission where the software is in control. Then your perspective changes very quickly, and you really don’t want to cut any corners.”

Holzmann didn’t cut corners on his way to the JPL, either. Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he received an engineer’s degree in electrical engineering from the Delft University of Technology. He has written four books, including “The Spin Model Checker – Primer and Reference Manual” and “The Early History of Data Networks.”

Prior to joining the JPL in 2003, Holzmann worked for over 20 years in the Computing Science Research Center at AT&T’s Bell Labs.

With each mission that NASA carries, more and more software is being used on spacecraft. Any small defect can pose a problem during a mission, and with the long transmission delays while a spacecraft is in flight, fixing defects can be “particularly nasty,” Holzmann noted.

As a result, Holzmann and his team have the unenviable task of catching software defects before they reach mission operations. In May 2003, the JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software was created to try and achieve long-term improvements in the JPL’s software systems. The laboratory develops coding standards and creates defect catchers.

Currently, the Laboratory for Reliable Software has its attention on the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Mars Science Laboratory will put a rover onto the red planet to assess whether or not Mars is an environment that could sustain microbial life. In December 2008, the mission was postponed from 2009 to 2011 as a result of issues with flight system testing and hardware, according to NASA. Holzmann said this mission has a couple million lines of code, more than any previous mission.

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