[CESG] CCSDS 2026 flavor of the Year 2038 problem

[Daniel Fischer]

Dear all,

 

In ESA we have noticed an issue with the time epoch in CCSDS
implementations. Holger Dreihahns team has discovered the issue and he has
condensed the information in the bellow message. We thought it would be
important to make also other CCSDS organisations aware of this and if you
think this is relevant please inform your teams. Holger is of course
available to provide more information as needed.

 

 

There seems to be a 'CCSDS 2026 flavor of the Year 2038 problem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem. The CCSDS 2026 flavor of
the problem potentially occurs 12 years before 2038 for dates as of 2026, as
the CCSDS epoch of 1958 is twelve years before the UNIX epoch 1970.

 

In general, the problem occurs when a software stores the number of seconds
since epoch in a signed 32bit integer. The problem may be subtle; see the
following line of C++ having the problem for daysSinceEpoch > 24855:

            int64_t secsSinceEpoch = daysSinceEpoch * 86400;

Note: The CCSDS time standards are fine. However, software implementations
of these standards may have a problem. As such, organizations might want to
check if systems are impacted.

 

 

Kind Regards,

Daniel

 

 

ESA - European Space Agency
Dr. Daniel Fischer (he/him) I  Lead Ground Systems Engineering Architect

Ground Segment Engineering and Innovation Department
Directorate of Operations
ESOC I Robert-Bosch-Str. 5, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Tel: +49 6151 902718
 <mailto:Daniel.Fischer at esa.int> Daniel.Fischer at esa.int   I
<http://www.esa.int/> www.esa.int

 

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