6 ms·

NASA Curiosity Mars Rover Will Spend First Weekend Installing New Software

69 points by llambda 14y ago

SeanDav 14y ago
I am fairly amazed that they need to do this because of what looks like space constraints. I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space and the potential for screw ups just seems way too high to my mind. I hope they get it right...
- mechanical_fish 14y ago
  Fortunately they have redundant machines. I suspect they'll figure it out. It does sound funny that they wouldn't just have thrown a few more SSDs on there, but then again this is a space probe. When my SSD fails I get mad because I'm forced to waste three whole hours traveling to the Apple Store for warranty service. Curiosity's Apple Store is a bit farther away. Their storage has to be radiation-hardened, guaranteed to last through the mission, have minimum weight, consume minimum power, avoid overheating under extremely weird environmental conditions… It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things. This is why I really like the idea of sending vast numbers of lightweight probes built with consumer- and/or industrial-grade components. If some of them fail completely, it doesn't matter too much, because there are a dozen others on the same mission.
    - raverbashing 14y ago
      That was the idea behind the NASA's "Faster better cheaper" experiment. But it didn't work out much The problem is that you need a lot more confidence than making something and hoping it works. Of course NASA would save a lot of money (and face) if they went 100% metric, still...
    - javajosh 14y ago
      That may become feasible when launch costs decrease. But when it costs $10k a pound to get stuff into orbit (and probably much more to get it to Mars) it pays to be conservative about the payload.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        I hate to be the bearer of good news, but launch costs these days is more like $4k/lb. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301
        JumpCrisscross 14y ago
        Why are Soviet and Chinese rockets half as cheap to launch per pound than comparable American and European rockets? What are they trading off?
        luriel 14y ago
        Somewhat surprisingly and quite sadly, they are mostly trading off bureaucracy.
        javajosh 14y ago
        That reference states that it's about $4k for low earth orbit, $10k for higher orbit (geosynchronous transfer orbit). So the cost to get a pound to Mars is certainly >$10k.
    - kristoffer 14y ago
      Most commercial/industrial/military grade components will break permanently after a short while (weeks) due to charge deposit from impacting ions, or from ion induced short circuit. They will also malfunction regularly because of soft errors caused by the radiation (this could at least be solved with different types of redundancy).
- mburns 14y ago
  Not to be rude, but it sounds like you're just unfamiliar with standard procedure. "We designed the mission from the start to be able to upgrade the software as needed for different phases of the mission," >I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space It doesn't. I bet it takes just as much space as you imagine it does. The rover just have that little space to work with. These aren't last year's FPS gaming rigs with hundreds of gigs on SSD available. These are hardened, turn-of-the-millennium embedded computers. >the potential for screw ups just seems way too high Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid-mission.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    > Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid-mission. OK, but the Viking 1 lander on Mars was lost due to human error during a software update. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Mission_end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Mission_end That's not to say software updates don't make sense, but you can't just justify them with "MSL was designed to do it and it's been done successfully before." Rather, you have to weigh the benefits and risk as usual. Luckily, I have confidence this was carefully though about and that the right decision has been made.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    It actually has a reasonable amount of flash. Two gigabytes, empty of experimental data, should be able to hold multiple versions of the OS fine. They can't be particularly squeezed for space when they tossed in four times that much per camera. I'll be baffled if they're doing this for any other reason than pushing the most recent and polished code.
- jsz0 14y ago
  I could be very wrong but since the software was loaded during transit to Mars before landing on the surface they must have had both loaded on local storage. Maybe the software wasn't done in time for launch?
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I was interested to learn that most of the software was done by the end of 2008.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      I think this is because MSL was originally scheduled for the previous window in the Earth-Mars transit (about 2 years prior), but was pushed back.
      - SpikeDad 14y ago
        Correct. It was scheduled for 2009 but due to problems with the new dry lubricated motors and software issues they decided to delay to the next launch window which of course was Aug 2012. A very nice documentary is currently running on Discovery which goes into much detail on the construction of MSL.
- SpikeDad 14y ago
  You should have watched the press conferences where this was explained. The current software is optimized for the flight and landing. Now that they are on the surface, much of this functionality is not needed so they are switching to a driving and experimenting optimized version. NASA has updated software exactly like this on a number of previous missions so no one expects any trouble.
- mbell 14y ago
  Have you really never had to install a firmware or BIOS update? It's the the same thing.
excuse-me 14y ago
Please insert disk 2
rowborg 14y ago
I find the idea of a bricked Curiosity horribly depressing. Let's make sure to wait a FULL FIVE MINUTES before rebooting, ok guys?
- powerslave12r 14y ago
  Or 14.
EternalFury 14y ago
Amusing, considering I was bashed last night with repeated "you can't patch it once it's on Mars".
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Once you build an "over the air" upgrade capability and a fail-safe mode (unlike my Android phone, thanks for nothing G & S) you can do it But the software, as far as I know, is very modular, so this could be only an upgrade of some modules Edit: by RTFA this looks more like a replacement rather than an update, like, making usage of all the landing software space since this is not needed anymore.
- tsotha 14y ago
  Spirit and Opportunity were upgraded as well.
  - dlokshin 14y ago
    When they took off, the autonomous navigation wasn't even close to complete. They pushed that software once the two Rovers were already on Mars. (I was working on the Rover team at the time)
    - shaunpoore 14y ago
      I was gonna say the only reason I can think of to not load the software before it takes off is because it isn't finished yet. I'd imagine memory is pretty small/inexpensive even if it has to be specially fitted to get blasted across the solar system and work next to a nuclear power plant.
- zerohp 14y ago
  Voyager 2 was at the edge of the solar system when JPL diagnosed and corrected a single bit error that caused it to return garbage data. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151
maratd 14y ago
Scary! What if they brick it?
- hartror 14y ago
  There is plenty of redundancy to deal with this sort of thing and they've done lots of on the fly updating of various robot probes including on 40y/o Voyager 2 which had a flipped bit in its memory.
CWIZO 14y ago
Is the new software already on curiosity and it just needs to be installed or are they transmitting the new software from earth?
- agildehaus 14y ago
  The update was transferred to the rover during the cruise stage.
iuguy 14y ago
"Updating your rover is almost complete. You must restart your rover for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your rover now?” Am I the only one having a very nervous moment when the update's applied?
- riledhel 14y ago
  Previous missions had problems with that one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_21.2C_2004.29_flash_memory_management_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_...
robertskmiles 14y ago
I was wondering what kind of security they have on the upgrade system. Presumably the software packages are signed. No hacker on Earth wouldn't like to be able to say they'd cracked a system on Mars. But then I thought, "Who actually has the hardware to broadcast to Mars in the first place?".
- vladd 14y ago
  See the discussion in this other thread: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4368242 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4368242
  - riledhel 14y ago
    I've never realized there was a .org domain before. Thought something weird happened because I was logged in this site and when I tried to vote in your link I couldn't!
DrCatbox 14y ago
Am I the only one thats afraid of a fuckup happening and the rover becoming bricked before it actually moved!?
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
  I'm fairly sure that completely separating system boot functionality and software reprogramming functionality was one of the first requirements of the rover software update subsystem! Sticking the bootloader in a ROM is a fairly secure way to accomplish this.
- jonhendry 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure they have a duplicate hardware setup for testing beforehand and debugging problems, which ought to help avoid such problems, and help fixing problems that arise.
calciphus 14y ago
Looks like an example of progeny mimicking creator. "You're someplace you've never been, seeing and experiencing things almost no one else gets to, and you spend your weekend fiddling with computers." That's OK. We have all done it, and hopefully the outcome will be slightly better than "Crap, I hosed up my RAID array and now this random obscure OS build I installed is completely broken."

69 points by llambda 14y ago

I am fairly amazed that they need to do this because of what looks like space constraints. I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space and the potential for screw ups just seems way too high to my mind. I hope they get it right...

mechanical_fish 14y ago
Fortunately they have redundant machines. I suspect they'll figure it out. It does sound funny that they wouldn't just have thrown a few more SSDs on there, but then again this is a space probe. When my SSD fails I get mad because I'm forced to waste three whole hours traveling to the Apple Store for warranty service. Curiosity's Apple Store is a bit farther away. Their storage has to be radiation-hardened, guaranteed to last through the mission, have minimum weight, consume minimum power, avoid overheating under extremely weird environmental conditions… It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  It's also effectively required to be quite a few years old, in order to have had plenty of time to be baked in to the hardware and software platform. Curiosity was designed years ago, and it was based on designs that are far older, and on a mission like this it's more important to preserve the well-tested platform and hard-won expertise than to try something new. You spend the risk budget on more important things. This is why I really like the idea of sending vast numbers of lightweight probes built with consumer- and/or industrial-grade components. If some of them fail completely, it doesn't matter too much, because there are a dozen others on the same mission.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    That was the idea behind the NASA's "Faster better cheaper" experiment. But it didn't work out much The problem is that you need a lot more confidence than making something and hoping it works. Of course NASA would save a lot of money (and face) if they went 100% metric, still...
  - javajosh 14y ago
    That may become feasible when launch costs decrease. But when it costs $10k a pound to get stuff into orbit (and probably much more to get it to Mars) it pays to be conservative about the payload.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      I hate to be the bearer of good news, but launch costs these days is more like $4k/lb. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=301
      - JumpCrisscross 14y ago
        Why are Soviet and Chinese rockets half as cheap to launch per pound than comparable American and European rockets? What are they trading off?
        luriel 14y ago
        Somewhat surprisingly and quite sadly, they are mostly trading off bureaucracy.
      - javajosh 14y ago
        That reference states that it's about $4k for low earth orbit, $10k for higher orbit (geosynchronous transfer orbit). So the cost to get a pound to Mars is certainly >$10k.
  - kristoffer 14y ago
    Most commercial/industrial/military grade components will break permanently after a short while (weeks) due to charge deposit from impacting ions, or from ion induced short circuit. They will also malfunction regularly because of soft errors caused by the radiation (this could at least be solved with different types of redundancy).
mburns 14y ago
Not to be rude, but it sounds like you're just unfamiliar with standard procedure. "We designed the mission from the start to be able to upgrade the software as needed for different phases of the mission," >I wouldn't have thought that programming code would take significant space It doesn't. I bet it takes just as much space as you imagine it does. The rover just have that little space to work with. These aren't last year's FPS gaming rigs with hundreds of gigs on SSD available. These are hardened, turn-of-the-millennium embedded computers. >the potential for screw ups just seems way too high Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid-mission.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  > Both Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft have been sent software updates, without fault. MSL was designed from the get-go to have software updates mid-mission. OK, but the Viking 1 lander on Mars was lost due to human error during a software update. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Mission_end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Mission_end That's not to say software updates don't make sense, but you can't just justify them with "MSL was designed to do it and it's been done successfully before." Rather, you have to weigh the benefits and risk as usual. Luckily, I have confidence this was carefully though about and that the right decision has been made.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  It actually has a reasonable amount of flash. Two gigabytes, empty of experimental data, should be able to hold multiple versions of the OS fine. They can't be particularly squeezed for space when they tossed in four times that much per camera. I'll be baffled if they're doing this for any other reason than pushing the most recent and polished code.
jsz0 14y ago
I could be very wrong but since the software was loaded during transit to Mars before landing on the surface they must have had both loaded on local storage. Maybe the software wasn't done in time for launch?
- rhizome 14y ago
  I was interested to learn that most of the software was done by the end of 2008.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    I think this is because MSL was originally scheduled for the previous window in the Earth-Mars transit (about 2 years prior), but was pushed back.
    - SpikeDad 14y ago
      Correct. It was scheduled for 2009 but due to problems with the new dry lubricated motors and software issues they decided to delay to the next launch window which of course was Aug 2012. A very nice documentary is currently running on Discovery which goes into much detail on the construction of MSL.
SpikeDad 14y ago
You should have watched the press conferences where this was explained. The current software is optimized for the flight and landing. Now that they are on the surface, much of this functionality is not needed so they are switching to a driving and experimenting optimized version. NASA has updated software exactly like this on a number of previous missions so no one expects any trouble.
mbell 14y ago
Have you really never had to install a firmware or BIOS update? It's the the same thing.

excuse-me 14y ago

Please insert disk 2

rowborg 14y ago

I find the idea of a bricked Curiosity horribly depressing. Let's make sure to wait a FULL FIVE MINUTES before rebooting, ok guys?

powerslave12r 14y ago
Or 14.

EternalFury 14y ago

Amusing, considering I was bashed last night with repeated "you can't patch it once it's on Mars".

raverbashing 14y ago
Once you build an "over the air" upgrade capability and a fail-safe mode (unlike my Android phone, thanks for nothing G & S) you can do it But the software, as far as I know, is very modular, so this could be only an upgrade of some modules Edit: by RTFA this looks more like a replacement rather than an update, like, making usage of all the landing software space since this is not needed anymore.
tsotha 14y ago
Spirit and Opportunity were upgraded as well.
- dlokshin 14y ago
  When they took off, the autonomous navigation wasn't even close to complete. They pushed that software once the two Rovers were already on Mars. (I was working on the Rover team at the time)
  - shaunpoore 14y ago
    I was gonna say the only reason I can think of to not load the software before it takes off is because it isn't finished yet. I'd imagine memory is pretty small/inexpensive even if it has to be specially fitted to get blasted across the solar system and work next to a nuclear power plant.
zerohp 14y ago
Voyager 2 was at the edge of the solar system when JPL diagnosed and corrected a single bit error that caused it to return garbage data. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-151

maratd 14y ago

Scary! What if they brick it?

hartror 14y ago
There is plenty of redundancy to deal with this sort of thing and they've done lots of on the fly updating of various robot probes including on 40y/o Voyager 2 which had a flipped bit in its memory.

CWIZO 14y ago

Is the new software already on curiosity and it just needs to be installed or are they transmitting the new software from earth?

agildehaus 14y ago
The update was transferred to the rover during the cruise stage.

iuguy 14y ago

"Updating your rover is almost complete. You must restart your rover for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your rover now?” Am I the only one having a very nervous moment when the update's applied?

riledhel 14y ago
Previous missions had problems with that one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_21.2C_2004.29_flash_memory_management_anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Sol_18_.28January_...

robertskmiles 14y ago

I was wondering what kind of security they have on the upgrade system. Presumably the software packages are signed. No hacker on Earth wouldn't like to be able to say they'd cracked a system on Mars. But then I thought, "Who actually has the hardware to broadcast to Mars in the first place?".

vladd 14y ago
See the discussion in this other thread: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4368242 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4368242
- riledhel 14y ago
  I've never realized there was a .org domain before. Thought something weird happened because I was logged in this site and when I tried to vote in your link I couldn't!

DrCatbox 14y ago

Am I the only one thats afraid of a fuckup happening and the rover becoming bricked before it actually moved!?

HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
I'm fairly sure that completely separating system boot functionality and software reprogramming functionality was one of the first requirements of the rover software update subsystem! Sticking the bootloader in a ROM is a fairly secure way to accomplish this.
jonhendry 14y ago
I'm pretty sure they have a duplicate hardware setup for testing beforehand and debugging problems, which ought to help avoid such problems, and help fixing problems that arise.

calciphus 14y ago

Looks like an example of progeny mimicking creator. "You're someplace you've never been, seeing and experiencing things almost no one else gets to, and you spend your weekend fiddling with computers." That's OK. We have all done it, and hopefully the outcome will be slightly better than "Crap, I hosed up my RAID array and now this random obscure OS build I installed is completely broken."