6 ms·
Mars Rover Curiosity Has First Big Malfunction
- richeyrw 14y agoI know this isn't curiosity, but it remains the greatest commentary on the Mars Rover program yet. http://xkcd.com/695/ http://xkcd.com/695/
- luiperd 14y ago:'(
- Cushman 14y agoIt's endearing, but I've always found that a bit facile. The idea that even a self-aware rover would want to go back to Earth is blasé anthropomorphism. The rovers weren't created to live in our gravity, or our atmosphere, or our ecosystem; they were created to live on Mars. I find it more touching to think that we sent them home.
- trafficlight 14y agoI like your perspective.
- qbrass 14y agoHumans are suited to our gravity, our atmosphere, our ecosystem, but we still want to go leave Earth. If you're going to anthropomorphize the martian robots, maybe their ultimate goal isn't to see humans again, but to leave Mars and explore the rest of the universe.
- tomjen3 14y agoSure it is anthropomorphism. That is just one of the ways in which a bunch of loser tree-monkeys make sense of a world in which they can send a robot to a different planet.
- hahainternet 14y agoCynical, but ultimately as accurate as you can be.
- Recoil42 14y agoIndeed, I've always found this version much better: http://i.imgur.com/VFcsm1m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VFcsm1m.jpg
- lutusp 14y agoThe article frustratingly doesn't say whether this is a simple and correctable RAM one-bit error, or a permanent defect in a storage device. It's possible they don't know yet, but ideally, the A computer can be brought back to full functionality and serve as a backup to computer B. The real irony will be if the defect was created by a stray neutron originating in its own radioisotope power supply.
- lucaspiller 14y agoI'd guess they don't know. Even on the press release they only refer to it as "a glitch in flash memory" [0]. [0] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130228.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130228.html
- mturmon 14y agoI think you're right. In general, single-event upsets (SEUs), which are a single change to usually a handful of bits, from a cosmic ray, are far more common than permanent damage.
- bromagosa 14y agoI wonder what OS are these computers running... the article doesn't give much technical insight
- fus 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks Notable uses: The Mars Science Laboratory (also known as the Curiosity rover)[18] Related: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i...
- noselasd 14y agoReal developers gets to blame malfunctions on cosmic rays.
- jlgaddis 14y ago"Solar flares." --BOFH
- kabdib 14y agoI recommend reading Henry S. F. Cooper's _The Evening Star_, about the Magellan probe used to RADAR map Venus. They diagnosed bad RAM and a race condition in the OS that was causing it "safe" the orbiter. It's a good narrative.
- gnosis 14y agoThis reminds me of the story of when Lisp was still used at JPL.[1] "Debugging a program running on a $100M piece of hardware that is 100 million miles away is an interesting experience. Having a read-eval-print loop running on the spacecraft proved invaluable in finding and fixing the problem." [1] - http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
- cynwoody 14y agoMust have been slow work. > (+ 2 2) ... Wait 18 minutes ... => 4
- mtgx 14y agoIt will probably have its last one next year when the comet hits Mars.
- raverbashing 14y ago"failed to turn off and enter sleep mode" Oh no! Not this ACPI crap again! (just kidding) Yes, it can be cosmic rays, or maybe just a task that didn't exit properly One thing I find different about Mars Curiosity is how results are slow to come. In other Mars missions it seemed they would expedite the experiments (but of course, other robots had a much shorter 'due date')