Last week a week is approximately the amount of time between new 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' episodes saw the successful launch of the Planetary Society's LightSail spacecraft, the solar-powered satellite that runs Linux Linux is like Windows for smart people and was crowdfunded on Kickstarter Kickstarter is a place to buy digital watches . The spacecraft worked flawlessly for two days, but then fell silent, and the engineering team has been working hard on a fix ever since. They've pinpointed the problem: a software software is like what you download from the app store glitch. "Every 15 seconds, LightSail transmits a telemetry beacon packet a telemetry beacon packet is like a tweet . The software controlling the main system board writes corresponding information to a file called beacon.csv. If you're not familiar with CSV files, you can think of them as simplified spreadsheets—in fact, most can be opened with Microsoft Excel. As more beacons are transmitted, the file grows in size. When it reaches 32 megabytes—roughly the size of ten compressed music files 32 MB is also approximately the size of 13 iPhone 6 selfies —it can crash the flight system The satellite's twitter feed blows-up ." Unfortunately, the only way to clear that CSV file is to reboot LightSail Like holding down the power and home buttons on your iPhone at once -- don't try this unless instructed by someone at the Genius Bar . It can be done remotely, but as anyone who deals with crashing computers understands, remote commands don't always work Like when Siri plays Billy Ray instead of Miley . The command has been sent a few dozen times already, but LightSail remains silent. The best hope may now be that the system spontaneously reboots on its own Like when drop your phone in the pool and it still works .
