Mars rovers get help from Wind River Systems

Computerworld - When the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers lands on the red planet tomorrow night, scientists will be ready to begin collecting new evidence to try and solve the riddle of whether life has ever existed on Mars.
The first rover to land, named Spirit, is expected to descend to the Martian surface at about 11:30 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow and will be guided -- as it has been throughout its flight -- by an embedded operating system from Wind River Systems Inc. in Alameda, Calif. The operating system will manage the trajectory, descent, operations control, data collection and communications of the missions, according to Wind River.
The VxWorks operating system was embedded in a specially prepared, radiation-hardened 20-MHz PowerPC CPU installed on each of the rovers, along with 128MB of RAM. The hardware was cutting-edge back when it was chosen in the mid-1990s, but then it had to be treated to ensure its reliability in the radiation of deep space -- a process that takes five to 10 years, said Mike Deliman, a technical staff member at Wind River.
The electronic circuits in manned spacecraft didn't require such intensive hardening treatments because the vehicles were specially built to protect the crew and offered the same protection for hardware. In space, unprotected silicon can be damaged by fast-moving protons, which can bore holes in it, Deliman said.
As the mission has progressed, NASA technicians have uploaded new instructions to the landers at each phase of the mission because of their small memory capacities.
Later this month, on Jan. 24, a second Mars rover, named Opportunity, is expected to land and begin its own experiments and exploration of the planet.
Meanwhile, a separate NASA mission, a comet research probe called Stardust, is scheduled to do experiments and arrive today after a four-year flight to catch the comet Wild 2. Stardust is equipped with a VxWorks operating system programmed to help the probe collect samples of interstellar dust from the comet's tail.
The dust particles will be collected using a super-lightweight, silicon-based substance called Aerogel, which will later return to Earth in a recovery capsule. Scientists will then analyze the collected space dust for clues to the origin of Earth and the solar system.
The Mars rovers were launched last June and July, and Stardust was launched in February 1999.

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