I went down this rabbithole not long ago with the rovers on-board computer. The writeup from the people who designed the system was really approachable for some

I went down this rabbithole not long ago with the rovers on-board computer. The writeup from the people who designed the system was really approachable for someone without any aerospace experience. There's a lot of challenges and tradeoffs involved. Some takeaways: > Constrained CPU: 133MHz PowerPC, 128MB RAM, 4GB storage > Software written in C, OS is VxWorks > Only get contact a few times a day, rover must be charged and ready each time regardless of uncompleted tasks. Scheduling is hard. > Some tasks require parts preheated for X time, which depends on ambient temp, they use a lookup table for the time of day instead of measuring the temp directly. (Assume this is for reliability purposes) > High level activities are constructed in a GUI by the operations team, low-level tasks are written in XML, both are uploaded to the rover as a binary plan file. It's a good read, do recommend it. https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/rabideau_iwpss2017_prototyping.pdf https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/rabideau_iwp...