Martian robot tourist Curiosity's new operating system will go into production on 13 August after it was successfully uploaded and installed by mission scientists. The boffins had said the remote upgrade represented a major milestone for the craft. NASA tested the upgrade on August 11th in an exercise during which it “executed …

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1. 1. 1. Monday 13th August 2012 20:28 GMT Destroy All Monsters
      
      Re: Clearly Fake
      
      Maybe just a honest mistake...
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shot_an_Arrow_into_the_Air
      
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Monday 13th August 2012 08:53 GMT Critical

Not really its Operating System...

The Curiosity runs VxWorks as its OS, and the JPL's flight software runs on top of that. The application layer is being upgraded.

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Monday 13th August 2012 10:53 GMT Jet Set Willy

Tourist?

"Martian robot tourist" - more like "Martian robot immigrant" because it ain't coming back.

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1. Monday 13th August 2012 12:20 GMT Oliver Mayes
  
  Re: Tourist?
  
  I'd like to think that one of the first manned missions would recover the rovers for them to be brought back as heroes.
  
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2. Monday 13th August 2012 12:45 GMT John 62
  
  Re: Tourist?
  
  Robot Tourist by Ten Benson is one of my favourite songs of all time :D
  
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Monday 13th August 2012 11:11 GMT Annwyn

Amazing pics, but...

I've just been checking out the "First Hi-Res Color Mosaic of Curiosity's Mastcam Images" on the NASA site and is it just me, or do the "The black areas [indicating] images not yet returned by the rover." look more like redaction than missing data?

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1. Monday 13th August 2012 11:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Amazing pics, but...
  
  http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/676004main_pia16051-fullportal_full.jpg
  
  Definitely redaction, there are clearly items of interest in the blacked out sections.... Let the conspiracy begin!
  
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2. Monday 13th August 2012 12:02 GMT BlinkenLights
  
  Re: Amazing pics, but...
  
  Not redaction, just not wasting bandwidth by sending back high-res pics of the rover.
  
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  1. Monday 13th August 2012 20:29 GMT Destroy All Monsters
    
    Re: Amazing pics, but...
    
    Hiding the Truth about Space Nazis, more like.
    
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Monday 13th August 2012 11:36 GMT Anonymous Coward

Looks like Earth

... in that there are no harsh shadows and the sky is not black. This is presumably because of the martian atmosphere. But I'm surprised because the atmospheric pressure there is less than 1% of earth's. Perhaps daytime photos will look less earth-like.

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1. Monday 13th August 2012 12:31 GMT Paul Kinsler
  
  Re: Looks like Earth
  
  It's worth noting that long-exposure photos of te (earth) night sky aren't black either - wait long enough and they look quite a nice daytime light blue colour (source: an OPN article a few years back, doi:10.1364/OPN.16.11.000018 )
  
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  1. Monday 13th August 2012 13:25 GMT ian mccallion
    
    Re: Looks like Earth
    
    Nice to know, but I don't find it surprising. It does point up that we don't know light level and exposure time time of the Mars photos, and we are perhaps being tricked in seeing earth-like qualities.
    
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    1. Monday 13th August 2012 15:57 GMT Zot
      
      Re: Looks like Earth
      
      The scary thing is, if they discover water then they are then going to suggest it was very much another Earth.
      
      Which of course will get the 'look what we're doing to our own planet' brigade out on the streets again - "It will turn into Mars if we don't save it" - etc, etc.
      
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Monday 13th August 2012 12:57 GMT johnnymotel

oh dear...

if the rocks are just below the surface, there goes the allotment plans.

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1. Monday 13th August 2012 17:01 GMT Mr Young
  
  Re: oh dear...
  
  Good for foundations though - needed for the nuke plants, houses, pubs etc
  
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Monday 13th August 2012 13:58 GMT Anonymous John

Patch Monday.

One day ahead of schedule then.

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Monday 13th August 2012 17:10 GMT Slx

Is an OS upgrade not risky at that distance?

What I don't understand is why NASA would even risk an OS upgrade on a probe on Mars?

Surely you'd want a system like that 100% tested, tried, approved, validated, validated again and then validated a third time for good luck!

What if the OS upgrade had bricked the rover?!

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1. Monday 13th August 2012 17:48 GMT Mr Young
  
  Re: Is an OS upgrade not risky at that distance?
  
  Doesn't Curiousty have ROM? The upgrade probably can't brick our trusty new robot - it'll just have a wee break while the metric version is downloaded?
  
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2. Monday 13th August 2012 17:56 GMT JDX
  
  Re: Is an OS upgrade not risky at that distance?
  
  Since they are upgrading the software literally the moment it lands, I'm also confused why they didn't do it before take-off, considering how far ahead everything is planned.
  
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  1. Tuesday 14th August 2012 02:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Is an OS upgrade not risky at that distance?
    
    Maybe someone did a jail break along the way and they were afraid that it would be used to download illegal mp3's
    
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3. Monday 13th August 2012 20:34 GMT Destroy All Monsters
  
  Re: Is an OS upgrade not risky at that distance?
  
  > Surely you'd want a system like that 100% tested, tried, approved, validated, validated again and then validated a third time for good luck!
  
  This is rather exactly what happens in the lab. Then the transmitted data is checksummed to hell and back.
  
  This ain't Apple.
  
  Still, does anyone remember the PRIORITY INVERSION PROBLEM THAT AFFECTED MARS PATHFINDER, HMMM? HMMMMM??
  
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Monday 13th August 2012 17:30 GMT Anonymous Coward

Roaming charges

Can't be on O2; the data roaming charges for getting the OS upgrade would have bankrupted NASA...

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Monday 13th August 2012 18:48 GMT Paul Hovnanian

"resembled parts of the southwestern US."

Red states?

No aliens allowed?

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Monday 13th August 2012 19:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

what

Although I was a lowly computer programmer, I am wondering why this upgrade wasn't done before lift off? If something happened like errrr it blue screened, it would have been a easy and less embarrassing fix to have done all of this BEFORE they launched. donno.

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Tuesday 14th August 2012 07:31 GMT Alistair MacRae

Glad the update worked.

It'd be most sad to 'brick' the machine in the first week.

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Friday 17th August 2012 17:48 GMT Alfred Pimble

No geologists online today?

Clastic rocks, fine. Carstic rocks (so labelled when hovering over the image), I very much doubt.

Is the error with El Reg, or with NASA?

Paris, because, well, blindly following what your speelchucker tells you is just wrong.

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