7 ms·

Software upgrade for 19-year-old Martian water-spotter

95 points by zoomablemind 4y ago

zoomablemind 4y ago
> "...“We faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS,” says Carlo Nenna, MARSIS on-board software engineer at Enginium, who is implementing the upgrade. “Not least because the MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98!”" Not sure if this implies that there was an actual Win98 instance running on-board, or only some custom system/firmware which was developed under Win98... If they will be remotely installing a newer Windows version (which I doubt) on the Mars orbit, that must be added to the Guinness World Records! Ta-da!
- karmakaze 4y ago
  I take it to mean only the development environment was Windows 98, otherwise they could just have said using Win98. It wouldn't make any sense to put Win98 in MARSIS itself. Sending things into space isn't about how fast a solution can be made, it's about the robustness of what goes out.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    Yes, there's most definitely not anything on the probe that could even run Windows 98. ESA's article is pretty clear that it's just that the software was originally developed on Win98, but of course the usual game of telephone happened and several websites have actually reported that the orbiter itself is running Win98…
- ptsneves 4y ago
  Proprietary toolchains of that era are a special beast. They are probably talking about proprietary compilers and development tools, which were certified and depended in win98 environments. Perhaps they just ran the toolchain in a win98 qemu instance and developed on a modern computer. That is what I would do and I am an embedded build system guy.
  - flatiron 4y ago
    I’ve had problems emulating serial/parallel ports using qemu and usb. I had a legacy system that had some external devices. We just ran it on a hunk of junk on the sneakernet
    - ptsneves 4y ago
      If i recall correctly you can pass through USB ports if needed. Also given that serial/parallel ports are very simple you can often just write a driver or use the super powerful socat to massage things if needed. I once used socat to serve autopilot simulators that spawned on socat's socket accept and piped to actual serials. I could then serve serial over the networks. Really if I was a poet i would write an ode to socat Anyway, peripherals were non the wiser on the nature of the piping. A bit of annoying plumbing but can be done and enables you to have scalable CIs for embedded devices.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Why would a DSP assembler need access to a parallel port? Anyway, it probably works fine in Wine, more reliably than on native w98.
      - zinekeller 4y ago
        > Why would a DSP assembler need access to a parallel port? For debugging using twin probes? This isn't far-fetched, for example NASA has MAGGIE (for Curiosity, https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/51m2b4/meet_maggie_the_earthbased_copy_of_the_curiosity/ https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/51m2b4/meet_maggie_t...) and (Ethernet-based) OPTIMISM (for Perseverance, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars-rovers-earthly-twin https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars...).
graycat 4y ago
If we, the US and/or EU, send humans to the moon and Mars, soon we will have humans, maybe a lot of humans, dead on the moon or Mars or floating in space, for maybe some thousands of years. Big, long term embarrassment. Not good. Thus, I strongly suggest we send no humans to the moon or Mars. And I strongly suggest we take this opportunity to do the research, engineering, and development of essentially robots to do what we would want humans to do on the moon or Mars. Then we will have dead robots out there, but we won't have to care so much. If China, Russia, India, etc. want to send humans to the moon or Mars, then they will have dead Chinese, Russians, Indians, etc. out there for thousands of years. Their long term embarrassment, not ours.
- Faaak 4y ago
  How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.
  - graycat 4y ago
    How? The person is, uh, did I mention, dead? Since our intention was not to send people out there to die, their death indicates a failure, and that is an embarrassment. If anyone is a little slow to see the embarrassment, then I'm sure the US MSM (mainstream media) would use the deaths as a grand source of shocking headlines to grab people by the heart and gut, have their eyeballs follow, and increase the ad revenue. If you like the idea of dying out there, sign up to be one of the first humans on Mars: Your chances of staying there for thousands of years are excellent. And, for your death, I doubt that will take very long, maybe less than 100 hours after you land. That is, for humans, the moon and Mars are dangerous places, wildly, outrageously dangerous. For a death on the moon or Mars, sending the body back to earth would be expensive. Leaving the body there and adding it to the growing collection of dead bodies will be for thousands of years a grand embarrassment. For a body in space, often retrieving it would be very expensive, so expensive that we are in line to have a large, growing collection of bodies out in space in whatever orbits around whatever masses. In a little more detail, out there, humans will suffer from high energy radiation, i.e., cosmic rays, and the effects of low gravity. Further, both the physical and social environments will be highly foreign and, thus, very likely harmful. Yes, soon one proposal will be to gather up the bodies on the moon or Mars, load them into a special rocket, and send them to the sun. That will be an expensive rocket and still do nothing about the bodies in orbits. Let the Chinese, etc. accumulate dead bodies. We in the US will have just dead robots, right, that can be used for spare parts! Soooooo, here in the US, just take this opportunity to research, engineer, and develop various robots. We can learn our lesson the easy way (just read what I am writing here) or the hard way. But one way or the other, we are in line to learn our lesson: (A) Sending robots into space is quite doable. (B) Due to the dangers and the really goofy environments, there is no role for humans in deep space now or anytime on the horizon. Sooooo, the humans build the robots and send the robots, not the humans. The easy way or the hard way, guys.
Normille 4y ago
Jeeezus --how many fucking times! Does no-one ever bother to check if an article has already been submitted, before mashing their damned keyboard! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=mars+Windows+98&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- ziddoap 4y ago
  Can I ask why it makes you so upset? You can flag it and move on. I for one did not see the ones from a few days ago (they all seem to have 1-3 pts, probably never made it to the front), so I benefitted from the repost.
  - toastedwedge 4y ago
    I agree, with details: On occasion I end up seeing the reposts first because they're on the front page or second page rather than "the main one" with more upvotes and comments. Plus the timing. I might see the duplicate after the first submission due to the time of day I check. I'm just one person so YMMV.
  - Normille 4y ago
    >Can I ask why it makes you so upset? Because I browse HN by 'Newest'[0] and every single day, if there's a somewhat 'newsworthy' story, I see it resubmitted over and over and over again. Sometimes [as in this case] I continue to see it resubmitted multiple times a day for several days. It's annoying because it adds to the general noise-to-signal radio on the site [which is bad enough these days, with all the spam and junk that gets posted continually] and because it could so easily be avoided by just taking a few seconds to check if a story has already been submitted, before submitting it yourself to try and win some internet points. I just can't fathom how, when one of these big tech stories, which is absolutely nailed-on targeted at the HN demographic comes around, someone can be so fucking thick as to decide to share it, several days after it originally broke, seemingly without the notion crossing their vacant skull that someone else might have already done so [or several someones!]. But, of course, in true HN fashion; rather than condemn the people who are ruining the site by filling it with junk submissions, you all downvote the person who has the temerity to express his irritation. Those of you who browse by the 'normal' front page, do me a favour: spend a couple of days browsing HN by 'Newest' and then come back and tell me how that went for you. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
xenon_type 4y ago
I wish they could add some detail on how the update is done. Is it similar to Bluetooth OTA DFU (over-the-air device firmware update)? Do they have a bootloader that takes care of that? Does it work like a traditional bootloader or do they take additional cautionary steps?
- milgrim 4y ago
  The satellite probably has two processor modules. With A being active the software image for B gets uplinked via telecommands and then written to memory. Then the satellite is being rebooted using processor module B with the new software. If it does not work it will reboot again to A with the help of a watchdog. But if everything works, the software for processor module A can be updated then. Something like that I would suspect. Edit: disregard what I wrote, the article is about an update for the instrument and I thought it was about the satellite. But he Flight User Manual is available: https://archives.esac.esa.int/psa/ftp/MARS-EXPRESS/MARSIS/MEX-M-MARSIS-3-RDR-SS-EXT3-V1.0/DOCUMENT/MARSIS_FUM.PDF https://archives.esac.esa.int/psa/ftp/MARS-EXPRESS/MARSIS/ME...

95 points by zoomablemind 4y ago

> "...“We faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS,” says Carlo Nenna, MARSIS on-board software engineer at Enginium, who is implementing the upgrade. “Not least because the MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98!”" Not sure if this implies that there was an actual Win98 instance running on-board, or only some custom system/firmware which was developed under Win98... If they will be remotely installing a newer Windows version (which I doubt) on the Mars orbit, that must be added to the Guinness World Records! Ta-da!

karmakaze 4y ago
I take it to mean only the development environment was Windows 98, otherwise they could just have said using Win98. It wouldn't make any sense to put Win98 in MARSIS itself. Sending things into space isn't about how fast a solution can be made, it's about the robustness of what goes out.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  Yes, there's most definitely not anything on the probe that could even run Windows 98. ESA's article is pretty clear that it's just that the software was originally developed on Win98, but of course the usual game of telephone happened and several websites have actually reported that the orbiter itself is running Win98…
ptsneves 4y ago
Proprietary toolchains of that era are a special beast. They are probably talking about proprietary compilers and development tools, which were certified and depended in win98 environments. Perhaps they just ran the toolchain in a win98 qemu instance and developed on a modern computer. That is what I would do and I am an embedded build system guy.
- flatiron 4y ago
  I’ve had problems emulating serial/parallel ports using qemu and usb. I had a legacy system that had some external devices. We just ran it on a hunk of junk on the sneakernet
  - ptsneves 4y ago
    If i recall correctly you can pass through USB ports if needed. Also given that serial/parallel ports are very simple you can often just write a driver or use the super powerful socat to massage things if needed. I once used socat to serve autopilot simulators that spawned on socat's socket accept and piped to actual serials. I could then serve serial over the networks. Really if I was a poet i would write an ode to socat Anyway, peripherals were non the wiser on the nature of the piping. A bit of annoying plumbing but can be done and enables you to have scalable CIs for embedded devices.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Why would a DSP assembler need access to a parallel port? Anyway, it probably works fine in Wine, more reliably than on native w98.
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      > Why would a DSP assembler need access to a parallel port? For debugging using twin probes? This isn't far-fetched, for example NASA has MAGGIE (for Curiosity, https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/51m2b4/meet_maggie_the_earthbased_copy_of_the_curiosity/ https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/51m2b4/meet_maggie_t...) and (Ethernet-based) OPTIMISM (for Perseverance, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars-rovers-earthly-twin https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars...).

graycat 4y ago

If we, the US and/or EU, send humans to the moon and Mars, soon we will have humans, maybe a lot of humans, dead on the moon or Mars or floating in space, for maybe some thousands of years. Big, long term embarrassment. Not good. Thus, I strongly suggest we send no humans to the moon or Mars. And I strongly suggest we take this opportunity to do the research, engineering, and development of essentially robots to do what we would want humans to do on the moon or Mars. Then we will have dead robots out there, but we won't have to care so much. If China, Russia, India, etc. want to send humans to the moon or Mars, then they will have dead Chinese, Russians, Indians, etc. out there for thousands of years. Their long term embarrassment, not ours.

Faaak 4y ago
How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.
- graycat 4y ago
  How? The person is, uh, did I mention, dead? Since our intention was not to send people out there to die, their death indicates a failure, and that is an embarrassment. If anyone is a little slow to see the embarrassment, then I'm sure the US MSM (mainstream media) would use the deaths as a grand source of shocking headlines to grab people by the heart and gut, have their eyeballs follow, and increase the ad revenue. If you like the idea of dying out there, sign up to be one of the first humans on Mars: Your chances of staying there for thousands of years are excellent. And, for your death, I doubt that will take very long, maybe less than 100 hours after you land. That is, for humans, the moon and Mars are dangerous places, wildly, outrageously dangerous. For a death on the moon or Mars, sending the body back to earth would be expensive. Leaving the body there and adding it to the growing collection of dead bodies will be for thousands of years a grand embarrassment. For a body in space, often retrieving it would be very expensive, so expensive that we are in line to have a large, growing collection of bodies out in space in whatever orbits around whatever masses. In a little more detail, out there, humans will suffer from high energy radiation, i.e., cosmic rays, and the effects of low gravity. Further, both the physical and social environments will be highly foreign and, thus, very likely harmful. Yes, soon one proposal will be to gather up the bodies on the moon or Mars, load them into a special rocket, and send them to the sun. That will be an expensive rocket and still do nothing about the bodies in orbits. Let the Chinese, etc. accumulate dead bodies. We in the US will have just dead robots, right, that can be used for spare parts! Soooooo, here in the US, just take this opportunity to research, engineer, and develop various robots. We can learn our lesson the easy way (just read what I am writing here) or the hard way. But one way or the other, we are in line to learn our lesson: (A) Sending robots into space is quite doable. (B) Due to the dangers and the really goofy environments, there is no role for humans in deep space now or anytime on the horizon. Sooooo, the humans build the robots and send the robots, not the humans. The easy way or the hard way, guys.

Normille 4y ago

Jeeezus --how many fucking times! Does no-one ever bother to check if an article has already been submitted, before mashing their damned keyboard! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=mars+Windows+98&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ziddoap 4y ago
Can I ask why it makes you so upset? You can flag it and move on. I for one did not see the ones from a few days ago (they all seem to have 1-3 pts, probably never made it to the front), so I benefitted from the repost.
- toastedwedge 4y ago
  I agree, with details: On occasion I end up seeing the reposts first because they're on the front page or second page rather than "the main one" with more upvotes and comments. Plus the timing. I might see the duplicate after the first submission due to the time of day I check. I'm just one person so YMMV.
- Normille 4y ago
  >Can I ask why it makes you so upset? Because I browse HN by 'Newest'[0] and every single day, if there's a somewhat 'newsworthy' story, I see it resubmitted over and over and over again. Sometimes [as in this case] I continue to see it resubmitted multiple times a day for several days. It's annoying because it adds to the general noise-to-signal radio on the site [which is bad enough these days, with all the spam and junk that gets posted continually] and because it could so easily be avoided by just taking a few seconds to check if a story has already been submitted, before submitting it yourself to try and win some internet points. I just can't fathom how, when one of these big tech stories, which is absolutely nailed-on targeted at the HN demographic comes around, someone can be so fucking thick as to decide to share it, several days after it originally broke, seemingly without the notion crossing their vacant skull that someone else might have already done so [or several someones!]. But, of course, in true HN fashion; rather than condemn the people who are ruining the site by filling it with junk submissions, you all downvote the person who has the temerity to express his irritation. Those of you who browse by the 'normal' front page, do me a favour: spend a couple of days browsing HN by 'Newest' and then come back and tell me how that went for you. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

xenon_type 4y ago

I wish they could add some detail on how the update is done. Is it similar to Bluetooth OTA DFU (over-the-air device firmware update)? Do they have a bootloader that takes care of that? Does it work like a traditional bootloader or do they take additional cautionary steps?

milgrim 4y ago
The satellite probably has two processor modules. With A being active the software image for B gets uplinked via telecommands and then written to memory. Then the satellite is being rebooted using processor module B with the new software. If it does not work it will reboot again to A with the help of a watchdog. But if everything works, the software for processor module A can be updated then. Something like that I would suspect. Edit: disregard what I wrote, the article is about an update for the instrument and I thought it was about the satellite. But he Flight User Manual is available: https://archives.esac.esa.int/psa/ftp/MARS-EXPRESS/MARSIS/MEX-M-MARSIS-3-RDR-SS-EXT3-V1.0/DOCUMENT/MARSIS_FUM.PDF https://archives.esac.esa.int/psa/ftp/MARS-EXPRESS/MARSIS/ME...