We are on Mars

[mmix]

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-la ... -mars.html

http://www.planetary.org/assets/images/ ... ontage.jpg

[oldcodger]

Yes, good stuff.
You would have thought that there would have been an outside broadcast of the touch down though.

[macxi]

Images from internet - site Terra:

'Curiosity killed the cat': images of probe on Mars are used to make a joke

[mmix]

NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software ... from 350M miles away

https://www.computerworld.com/s/article ... geNumber=1

"It's not like doing a regular remote upgrade," he said. "We don't have a person on the other end. The vehicle is up there by itself. We can't interact with someone on the other end. We have no one we can ask to check something for us. We have to send code up and then wait."

...
And while this is a major software upgrade, Andy Mishkin, a mission leader with JPL, noted that he has a separate team of about 100 programmers who write commands for Curiosity every day.

[macxi]

NASA upgrades Mars Curiosity software ... from 350M miles away

Mars will be closer to us now on, with images and information that will be sent.

But a other curiosity about the "Curiosity" is your old computer (2004), compared with today's computers:

Mars 'Curiosity' Rover Begins Four-Day Software Upgrade:

Remember, the rover shipped off to Mars in 2011 and was built for interplanetary space flight and an eventual landing. It's not rocking an Intel Core i7 processor and terabytes of storage. Rather, a single-board RAD750 setup that uses a PowerPC 750 clocked at around 200 MHz in addition to (a whopping) 256 megabytes of DRAM and two gigabytes of flash storage.
(...)
The operating system powering Curiosity itself is VxWorks, a 27-year-old OS that's used in more places than just planetary explanation.

Curiosity BIOS Update

The computer Curiosity is modest by the standards of 2012, but remember, the project was specified in 2004 and nobody invests billions of dollars and bet on untested components, newcomers to the market. So it uses the reliable RAD750, Power PC processor released in 2001. 10W consumes power, operating between -55 °C and 70 °C and stand playing a radiation dose of 100,000 rads.
(...)
During the flight NASA has updated the software to version 9.4, with programs cruise, and landing surface. Version 10 has also been sent and stored in Flash memory, but will only be installed now.