FUCK YEAH! Curiousity landed okay and sending images

[Cleo]

Just means that the average smart phone has way more computing power than the rover.

That Mac came out back when I was still doing computer consulting. I both loved it and hated it.

[Bill]

that seems to reveal an odd robot building engineering concept.

why wouldn't you build a robot like that with a design that uses computing technology only a few generations old?

couldn't you set up the engineering process so the computing functions can be updated as you go along?

I understand one needs to write all kinds of specialized programs, but, still, seems odd that they would accept such limitations.

[Bill]

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

[pc]

Originally Posted by Bill

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

I think that if they were able to spot Curiosity landing with Reconnaissance Orbiter, their knowledge of Mars, orbiters science and technology and whole communication process is way more deeper than they are telling the public.
I'm not talking about conspiracy theory or any other top secret stuff that the internet is just full of it, aliens etc.. but just the ability of catching a landing moment of one space ship on Mars with another ship orbiting Mars, millions of miles from Earth is just astounding. NASA's super computing power and the ability to use those huge amount of data is definitely something.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by pc

I think that if they were able to spot Curiosity landing with Reconnaissance Orbiter, their knowledge of Mars, orbiters science and technology and whole communication process is way more deeper than they are telling the public.

We have two orbiting satellites going around Mars. One is part of the deep space network and is a relay station, i.e. low power transmissions go to it, it relays those back to earth. The other is a satellite that has been doing spectral scans of the surface. Both were near the landing zone on purpose so that they could possibly get pictures.

Cleo, we have used the orbiters to find older crashed stages, and, did find the Beagle (the UK lander that crashed) and confirmed it in late 2006 when the RO arrived.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/ shows some of the pictures - including pictures of Spirit and Opportunity.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Bill

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

They cropped that photo:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...hield-spotted/

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Bill

that seems to reveal an odd robot building engineering concept.

why wouldn't you build a robot like that with a design that uses computing technology only a few generations old?

couldn't you set up the engineering process so the computing functions can be updated as you go along?

I understand one needs to write all kinds of specialized programs, but, still, seems odd that they would accept such limitations.

Millions and millions of existing lines of test code using that particular chipset which isn't compatible with today's chipsets. The OS that has been designed to handle these has been written over the years. They have extremely low power versions of these, while today's chips are still using 35-65 watts (the Curiosity has a total power output of 105 watts (I think)).

Basically, they picked the best chip at the time, wrote the OS around it - it was compatible with prior chips, does embedded very well, is reliable, true and tested, and they have millions of lines of code to support it.

In order to use newer chips, we have to fix their power consumption, deal with segmented memory architectures, etc. Though, segmented memory architecture is less noticeable now with 64bit CPUs.