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Artemis II Fault Tolerance

Hacker News · May 1, 2026, 5:39 PM

Key takeaways

  • Communications of the ACM had a fascinating post about how NASA built Artemis II s fault tolerant computer. 3 fascinating excerpts.
  • (1) Eight modules with several back up scenarios: Orion utilizes two Vehicle Management Computers, each containing two Flight Control Modules, for a total of four FCMs.
  • Effectively, eight CPUs run the flight software in parallel.

Communications of the ACM had a fascinating post about how NASA built Artemis II s fault tolerant computer. 3 fascinating excerpts.

(1) Eight modules with several back up scenarios: Orion utilizes two Vehicle Management Computers, each containing two Flight Control Modules, for a total of four FCMs. But the redundancy goes even deeper: each FCM consists of a self-checking pair of processors.

Effectively, eight CPUs run the flight software in parallel. The engineering philosophy hinges on a “fail-silent” design. The self-checking pairs ensure that if a CPU performs an erroneous calculation due to a radiation event, the error is detected immediately and the system responds.

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