Curiosity's new OS upgrade ready to go live
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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Re: Clearly Fake
Maybe just a honest mistake...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Shot_an_Arrow_into_the_Air
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.
Tourist?
"Martian robot tourist" - more like "Martian robot immigrant" because it ain't coming back.
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.
Re: Tourist?
Robot Tourist by Ten Benson is one of my favourite songs of all time :D
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?
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!
Re: Amazing pics, but...
Not redaction, just not wasting bandwidth by sending back high-res pics of the rover.
Re: Amazing pics, but...
Hiding the Truth about Space Nazis, more like.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
oh dear...
if the rocks are just below the surface, there goes the allotment plans.
Re: oh dear...
Good for foundations though - needed for the nuke plants, houses, pubs etc
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?!
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?
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.
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??
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
Roaming charges
Can't be on O2; the data roaming charges for getting the OS upgrade would have bankrupted NASA...
"resembled parts of the southwestern US."
Red states?
No aliens allowed?
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.
Glad the update worked.
It'd be most sad to 'brick' the machine in the first week.
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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