"... You need to be a bit conservative. The thing you're sending to Mars is going to be on its own and unrepairable. ..." Hardware is hard to fix but software

"... You need to be a bit conservative. The thing you're sending to Mars is going to be on its own and unrepairable. ..." Hardware is hard to fix but software is do-able. There is a lot of explanations how this was done with Pathfinder: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/mbj/mars_pathfinder/mars_pathfinder.html http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/mbj/mars_pathf... http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2004/02/16/liv_404763.shtml http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2004/02/16/liv_404763.s... http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1035610 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1035610 there was also some reconfiguring of Curiosity on-going/completed ~ http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/08/nasa-about-to-perform-the-ultimate-software-upgrade-on-mars/ http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/08/nasa-about-to-perform... there is also a lot of work done on 'self healing' software systems ~ http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/self-healing-computers-for-nasa-spacecraft/903 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/self-healing-computer...