What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#1

Post by joshuahedlund » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 12:47 PM UTC

What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?
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Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#2

Post by Sukotto » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 2:14 PM UTC

Tangentially, "They Write the Right Stuff" was a very interesting 1996 article about writing the software running the space shuttle.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050830190246/www.fastcompany.co...

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#3

Post by sodelate » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 2:28 PM UTC

to be sure , vxworks

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#4

Post by natep » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

Thanks for posting! The existing answer had almost no detail, so I wrote another: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159687/61021

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#5

Post by ColinDabritz » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 3:19 PM UTC

I believe the confusion between '500,000 lines' in the question vs '2.5 million/3.5 million' in the answers is the context. The 500,000 number is involved in the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) process specifically, and the rover systems are millions overall. Not sure why the values are 1m different, but the 2.5m citation is what is in the linked PDF.

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#6

Post by eliben » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 3:20 PM UTC

So much programming language research in the past 40 years, but C is, no doubt, still king.

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#7

Post by sanxiyn » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 3:33 PM UTC

ColinDabritz wrote: post #5

I believe the confusion between '500,000 lines' in the question vs '2.5 million/3.5 million' in the answers is the context. The 500,000 number is involved in the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) process specifically, and the rover systems are millions overall. Not sure why the values are 1m different, but the 2.5m citation is what is in the linked PDF.

Guess on 1 million difference: 2.5m citation is dated 2009, 3.5m citation is dated 2010.

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#8

Post by stox » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 3:42 PM UTC

The processor is an embedded, radiation hardened, version of the PowerPC.

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#9

Post by amirmansour » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

The two previous Mars rovers had some Java on them. I saw the code with my own eyes!

Re: What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?

#10

Post by antirez » Mon, Aug 06, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

Not sure what means that most of the C code is auto generated. From what?