Yay! Debugging Mars Rover

they are hoping it''s a software problem so that they can upload new software. In fact, the rover didn''t recieve it''s software until it was in orbit around mars.

apparently, there are a number of failsafe switches in the rover, that if it is a hardware problem, they can reroute power around it. Sounds like something out of star trek "Reroute power around the EPS grid" or some such technobabble that ST is famous for.

They didn''t bother to load it with software until it was in orbit? What''d they expect, a patch?

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Original post by Ravuya
They didn''t bother to load it with software until it was in orbit? What''d they expect, a patch?

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think about it, with the radiation from solar winds, the software could very well have been corrupted once the craft reached mars. Ergo, why load the software, get to mars, find out the software is corrupted, then reload the software when you could just load the software once at mars?

Besides, it gave them a few extra months to debug the software. Unfortunately, it might not have been enough.

I hope it''s just a small software problem, I''d hate to see this mission fail.

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Original post by Axiom
I hope it''s just a small software problem, I''d hate to see this mission fail.

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Me too, but if it does fail, we still have Opportunity!

I got to see parts of Spirit. My father works at a place called "Environ Labs" and they do lab testing on anything and everything (like vibration tests, gas tests, salty fog tests, explotion tests, implotion tests. yuo could say they do "everything" tests). I am not exactly sure what part of it he was testing, but it was half round and small and reflective. He was doing some heat tests on it.

Score: 5, Informative

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Original post by Axiom
I hope it''s just a small software problem, I''d hate to see this mission fail.

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I heard it was made using Java...

Yeah,I wouldn''t spend that many hours coding the software if I didn''t get my coffee...

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Original post by falkone

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Original post by Axiom
I hope it''s just a small software problem, I''d hate to see this mission fail.

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I heard it was made using Java...

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NO!!! Half of it was programmed using Cobol and another half using HTML. Than the two parts were linked together using Delphi and it was compiled using a MSVC++ (with a special force switch that forces compiling no matter how many errorz OMG!!) then it was optimized using MS ASM and was flashed using flashrom 2.23 with a -f parameter to force flashing cause the program was fullz of errorz OMG!!

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"C lets you shoot yourself in the foot rather easily. C++ allows you to reuse the bullet!"

Oh shit I''m not supposed to give that out. Shit I''m out of here beforce NASA finds out and sends fricking FBI agents to kick my ass.

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"C lets you shoot yourself in the foot rather easily. C++ allows you to reuse the bullet!"

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Original post by Samith
Me too, but if it does fail, we still have Opportunity!

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no pun intendid?

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u r what u bcome

I heard that VxWorks (their embedded OS) is failing tons. So obviously they should have gone with a different failsafe RTOS like QNX...

"QNX, it runs fucking nuclear reactors"

Update: It looks like their flash memory screwed up. So now they're running a ramdisk. Scoop here.

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[edited by - ravuya on January 24, 2004 9:05:01 PM]