Mike Deliman

2008-11-15T11:02:46-08:00

The Space Flight Software '08 workshop in Maryland was really nice. It was a great chance to meet several folks I've worked with over the last few decades, mostly as voices over the phone, and meet some folks new to me and the industry. The theme of the workshop was to share lessons learned and ideas used to make our missions more robust and reliable, more efficient, and reduce cost where possible. The idea is not only to test new technologies and integrate successful ideas with existing work, but to also maximize relevant data return on science objectives.

As might be expected, there was a lot of chatter about space projects, upcoming manned rocket development, recent discoveries in deep space, and success of various recent and ongoing missions. Congratulations to the Phoenix Mars Polar Lander team, by the way, on the successful completion of your mission!

In my opinion it was a very successful and well-enjoyed set of lectures, and lecturers. Thank you to the folks at JHU-APL who organized and made it possible.

I enjoyed all of the lectures, and only wish we'd all had a little more time for our presentations and
Q&A, and rubbing elbows. The environment was very relaxed. I kind of had to rush through my slides a bit (sorry guys..) and still ran a bit over. If any of the attendees have follow-on questions for me, feel free to email questions.

This kind of collaboration, if you will, is the kind of thing that makes our community and our projects that much more successful and unique. You often find this kind of idea-sharing in the commercial realm.

Speaking of cool subjects and space... HST recently returned the first-ever optical picture of an extrasolar planet- Fomalhaut b . How cool is that?!

But Not A Drop To Drink...

2008-07-31T14:59:56-07:00

Congratulations are due to the Mars Phoenix Lander crew.
Not only did their mission get its extension, they found the first part of what they were looking for.

They've confirmed the presence of that illusive substance, so critical to life on Earth: WATER!
Remember, everywhere we find water on Earth, we find something living in it.

Here's the announcement from NASA. Enjoy!
----

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

Pasadena

Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters,

Washington

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Sara Hammond 520-626-1974

University

Arizona

Tucson

shammond@lpl.arizona.edu

RELEASE: 2008-153 July 31, 2008

NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water,

Mission

Extended

TUCSON

Ariz.

-- Laboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

"We have water," said William Boynton of the

University

Arizona

, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by

Phoenix

last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

"Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars," said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in

Washington

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of

icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday's sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

"Mars is giving us some surprises," said

Phoenix

principal investigator Peter Smith of the

University

Arizona

. "We're excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we've done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we're finding ways to work with it and we're gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil."

Since landing on May 25,

Phoenix

has been studying soil with a chemistry lab, TEGA, a microscope, a conductivity probe and cameras. Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.

The mission is examining the sky as well as the ground. A Canadian instrument is using a laser beam to study dust and clouds overhead.

"It's a 30-watt light bulb giving us a laser show on Mars," said Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency.

A full-circle, color panorama of

Phoenix

's surroundings also has been completed by the spacecraft.

"The details and patterns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated terrain as far as the eye can see," said Mark Lemmon of

Texas

A&M

University

, lead scientist for

Phoenix

's Surface Stereo Imager camera. "They help us plan measurements we're making within reach of the robotic arm and interpret those measurements on a wider scale."

The

Phoenix

mission is led by Smith at the

University

Arizona

with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

Pasadena

Calif.

, and development partnership at Lockheed Martin in

Denver

. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the

University

Neuchatel

Switzerland

; the universities of

Copenhagen

and Aarhus in

Denmark

; the Max Planck Institute in

Germany

; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

For more about

Phoenix

, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

-end-

Wind River Webinar: Q and A

2008-07-23T09:50:56-07:00

Hello All,

last week as some of you know I was the featured presenter / presentation for a Webinar. (you may have problems watching that with firefox...) . During the course of the webinar, we were asked a number of questions, and we ran out of time...

Here are some of the questions and answers we couldn't get to.

--
Q: What is the biggest advantage of Vxwork over other real-time operation system?
A: VxWorks is the most well-deployed and well-used commercial realtime OS in the world. Because of this, the OS is more well-tested than any other commercial RTOS, for this reason I would say the maturity of VxWorks is perhaps it's greatest advantage.
--
Q:have you ever patched the OS or only the application sw?
A: In most cases, only application code is updated in space, though it is possible to patch or replace even the bootrom code in many of the space robots.
--
Q:Can VXWorks 'replace' itself in case of malfunction?
A: I'm not certain what "replace" means in this context; some of our customers have invented ways to detect bad RAM locations, map around those locations, and load vxWorks to the remaining RAM.
--
Q:How do you ensure that the RTOS does not crash? Even due to a simple NULL-pointer access? Do you have any built-in Crash Recovery mechanisms in WindRiver for Space systems?
A: While debugging with newer versions of VxWorks it is possible to use the MMU to trap accesses to, for instance, the 0-page, to catch accesses to uninitialized pointers, etc. Once code is sufficiently debugged, the MMU may be disabled if desired, or the product may be deployed with the protection enabled. As far as crash-recovery systems, most of the systems in-flight have created health maintenance and monitoring systems, and event logging systems. Wind River has learned from this, and our newer OS releases have support for configurable event logs and health monitoring.
--
Q:Do you customize Vx Works for individual customers ?
A: We have services experts available to help with everything from the initial installation, to implementation of the entire product, including modifying vxWorks for a particular project.
--
Q:Which the CPU platforms are apted for VxWorks? How to get more info about VXWorks and its using?
A: VxWorks is available for many PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, Xscale, and other CPU types. Wind River has offices world wide. Please check at WWW.Windriver.com for office locations.
--
Q: I know you have a trial version of vxworks, but for a person who want to learn it, it expires quick. do you have a slim version with no expiration?
A: We do not have a "slim" version.
--
Q: Is there a Webinar that spotlights VxWorks? A Demo?
A: Demos are available of all of our products, pleas contact your local sales office.
--
Q: how do you update your software on space robots?
A: This is highly dependent on the hardware and hardware capabilities used to implement the robots, so unfortunately our customers must usually invent the right methods.
--
Q: AI and VX Works.. Any efforts to embed supporting AI as a native support on VX Works?
A: Though AI systems and some AI capabilities have been implemented using VxWorks, I am not aware of any efforts to embed more than rudimentary AI functionality along with VxWorks; Stardust, DS1, and the Mars Exploration Rovers are the best examples I can think of that incorporated any degree of AI. Wind River is not planning on adding any AI capabilities to VxWorks (or Linux) at this time.
--
Q: how do you know when to time out communication to a mars rover when there is so much delay and interference?
A: That is left to the folks who implement the radio protocols used by the Deep Space Network to communicate with all the probes/robots/satellites in deep space. They are experts with communications in deep space. I expect sometime in the near future that this will all change with Delay Tolerant Networking and the implementation of the InterPlanetary Internet.
--
Q: Is VxWorks migrating from support of ASIC hardware to FPGA's?
A: VxWorks runs on a variety of platforms including COTS boards, ASIC, and FPGA based designs.
--
Q: All application using embedded controller or PCs?
A: Many manufacturers of COTS computer boards for VME, PCI, or cPCI supply VxWorks BSPs for their boards, and Wind River Systems supports BSPs for several COTS boards directly. I hope this answers the question.
--
Q: Do you see an increase in the percentage of embedded applications that use some form of Linux vs others like pure VxWorks (i.e. not including VxWorks Linux)?
A: To be clear: VxWorks is NOT Linux, the two are not even remotely related to each-other; vxWorks pre-dates Linux by... years. Likewise, Linux did not evolve from VxWorks. They are similar in some respects (Posix, networking support, etc), but they are not even "kissing cousins". Wind River does have our own versions of Linux available along with VxWorks.
Though I have seen an increased presence of Linux in the embedded arena, and an increased presence in the development and testing phases of even software for space applications, I have not seen Linux promoted to controlling a mission (e.g. the primary flight computer) yet.
--
Q: What problems are unique and interesting to underwater implementations of VxWorks like those faced by MBARI?
A: I wish I had a contact at MBARI for you to ask! As far as I know, most issues unique to the situation would be shared by all submersible vehicles, and MBARI has excellent experience in dealing with submersibles and software for underwater applications. Once the mechanical issues of sealing out the environment are taken care of, weather it's space or deep-sea, the rest becomes implementing software to control your devices, debugging, and deployment.
--
Q: [referring to an earlier question] Additional details on my earlier question on RTOS decision making ... The specific application is for an RTOS decision to be made for new instrumentation used in human spaceflight ... that is where do I start?
A: I would imagine you would need to start with the specifications for your deliverables: what kinds of certifications you will need, if any, and what kind of constraints the computer needs to operate under. For instance, will this be a deep-spacee project requiring rad-hard hardware, or will rad-tolerant hardware suffice? Will you need FAA or military certification, or none at all? Wind River is happy to discuss the software packages we have and how they may be applied to your project.
--
Q: which vxworks versions have flown in the past and how customized were they ? (components)
A: VxWorks 5.2, 5.3.1, 5.3.1 MER Edition, 5.5.1, and I think 6.2 have all flown in space. Other versions have flown in military aircraft, etc. The most customized component of VxWorks I believe would be the DosFS file system on the MER rovers. The folks at JPL made some great improvements after the SOL18 issue.

For the most part, we strive to keep the releases "as close as possible" to the standard releases in order to facilitate technical support and software maintainability. Newer radiation hardened chips are available that are very similar to commercial parts, like standard PowerPC or Sparc chips, and these newer chips run the same (current) versions of vxWorks as everyone else does. This allows the customer to use our standard technical support for many issues, making experts more available for all issues.
--
Q: There were flash managment issues on MER and the Polar Lander. Could you explain the issue?
A: The flash management issues on MER "A" Spirit was actually more a RAM management issue combined with a debug feature, precipitated from a "feature" of the DOS file system. I am not intimate with any problems experienced on Mars Phoenix Lander, but the last I heard MPL's experts have identified a possible application problem. Given when I'd heard this, I'd expect they may already have tested and sent-up a fix.
--
Q:Is VxWorks already been ported to RAD750 or Leon3FT ? Do you support academic R&D with easy to access software or anything other than that ? Thanks!
A: Yes - Rad750 BSP is supported by BAE Systems, from Wind River's perspective it's pretty much a "generic" PowerPC 750 and uses standard software and tools. BSPs are available for VxWorks versions 5.x and 6.x, I believe 6.4 is available and a BSP for 6.6 will be available soon.

Wind River does not directly support VxWorks on Leon, but the manufacturer does have a solution with VxWorks 6.x available (I find this very fascinating and would love to "play" with it sometime). :)

Wind River does have a University Program, contact your local Wind River sales office for details.
--
Q: How many versions/levels are there of VxWorks, and, how do you choose a version of VxWorks for example a Mars rover?
A: VxWorks has been around for a while, well over 20 years. When I first saw it, the version was 4.0, and there was one version of vxWorks that ran on top of other companies kernels. Now there are various versions of VxWorks for specific markets, and platforms available to help tailor VxWorks for specific usage. I would always recommend using the latest version available for your hardware platform that satisfies the needs of your program.

This was the first webinar I've ever presented. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

The Phoenix has landed... but the dust has not cleared

2008-06-24T08:44:21-07:00

it's another beautiful day in the Mojave, temps will easily pass the century mark, and there will be another batch of emails with various questions and "trolling" remarks about what exactly is or is not on Mars and how badly crippled it is.

So far, among the letters from the public, I've received claims of: "it's an Apollo moon-shot fake, like the rovers", there's a short in the robot arm, the robot arm is broken, the lander leaked 'rocket fuel', the OS crashed the lander and it's not responding, the lander runs Linux, the lander runs embedded Windows, the lander has a modern computer and uses 128MB of RAM.

Okay. I'll go through these to see if I can help clear some of the dust.

None of these were faked in studios in Burbank or anywhere else: Apollo missions, Mars Missions, rover shots from Mars, Phoenix landing on Mars. As Mom would say: Go wash your mouth out!

There's no short in the Robotic arm, as far as I know. What I do know - when Phoenix first landed, the protective covering over the arm did not pull back far enough, and was covering part of the arm. It was a bit short of retracting all the way, and might have gotten in the way of using the arm. Over the first night, it finished retracting, and was no problem. If there is an electrical short in the arm, I have not heard nor seen any news stories about it.

The Robotic Arm is not broken. The have managed to "cook" the first oven samples, and are doing science; the arm is delivering samples to the oven as desired.

The lander "leaked rocket fuel". Well, if you watched the landing, after it was securely on the ground, it vented rocket fuel. Venting is kind of like a leak, except leaks are unintentional. We did this because the pressurized fuel is no longer needed, and it's better to have the tanks depressurize on our schedule instead of their own.

The OS crashed the lander and it's not responding. I give you the day-to-day news item list from the Lander, please point me to the story about this: Phoenix News.

The Lander Runs embedded Windows / Linux / two hamsters on a treadmill. Well. No, no, and hamsters might be faster. I'm sure even Simon Barret has heard enough about it after this article. The lander runs our VxWorks, which is closer to Unix than Linux and runs our proprietary WIND kernel. Simon even posted a correction in this interview. I expect we'll both be getting emails about this for a short while.

The Rad6000 computer on-board can be switched-up to a whopping 20 Mhz. 20. Not 200, not 133. If they're following earlier design, the OS "knows about" only the bottom 32 MB of Ram, no matter how much is installed; the rest of the ram is used for application specific needs. The Rad6000 CPU is a RADiation Hardened RS6000 RISC processor, not MIPS, not Intel; it's a predecessor of PowerPC called Power. By today's standards it's a old war-torn bit of iron, based on what was a high-tech CPU in 1989.
It takes time to take a standard CPU and make it ready for deep space / mega-rad exposure to radiation.

I hope some of the dust is settling..

"Did you watch it?"

2008-05-27T08:51:41-07:00

Did I watch it?

I've been asked about a dozen times since Phoenix landed if I watched the landing.

Coverage was available, after all, on NASA-TV (both satellite and web feeds), and the Science Channel ran Mars footage all night, including covering the NASA TV feed. I've worked on a lot of Mars Stuff, and indeed Phoenix runs VxWorks 5.2 for Rad6000, a direct product of a handful of folks at Loral & JPL, and us 3 chickens at WRS (Brian, Lisa and I; I was the most-junior member of the engineering team).

But... Monaco, Indy, and Nascar all had big races going, and all the normal stuff of the Memorial Day Weekend - so many things to do. Did I watch it?

In answer... reprinted with the author's permission (I wrote it after all) a blow-by-blow account from a personal web log of an engineer who's worked on a lot of Mars stuff:

------ reprinted with permission from the original author, see copymark info.
[Editorial comment - this blog was updated every few minutes, each [EDIT] mark is between 1 and 5 minutes apart.]

MARS: EDL data flow starts in about 2 minutes.
[edit]
Mars Ody data stream: verified.
[edit]
Cruise stage separation...
[edit]
verified. UHF signal acquired. Separation complete, craft on course.
[edit]
T-3:30 atmospheric entry
[edit]
MRO link-up soon. t-10:00 touchdown
[edit]
MRO data link: confirmed
[edit]
8K data rate... confirmed.

Entering atmosphere.... in 30.. 29...
[edit]
4..3...2...
[edit]
Seven Minutes Of Terror: begin now.
[edit]

For the next few minutes, we will lose COMS as the craft generates a plasma shock wave by it's heat shield burning it's way through the atmosphere. Once we slow enough and cool down, COMS will be re-established.

Ody: drop in signal, but present.

Phoenix: at peak heating
[edit]
Phoenix: we're ready to re-establish direct COMS with Phoenix. We never lost dopler monitor from Ody.

4..3..2..1... 32K switch detected, ODY has carrier, Parachute deployed.
[edit]

DATA LOCK-UP.... [Control room goes wild] Ground Velo: 90M/S
[edit]
.... aproaching.

tick... tick....

60M/S ....

tick... tick...

Altitude Convergence... RADAR RELIABLE @ 2000M
control room goes wild

Gravity turn detected.

... approach... slowing... not much though....
slowing
TOUCHDOWN - LANDED...

WE'RE THERE! CONGRATULATIONS to MPL's successful landing
on Mars.

EDL COM: standing by...
[EDIT]

NORMAL TERMINATION OF EDL COMS, PHOENIX HAS LANDED, we're officially ON MARS!!!!!!!!

Folks, it's time for some champagne!
----------------------
[original work protected by creative-commons copyright. no reprinting w/o original author's permission]

Congratulations!

2008-05-25T17:03:37-07:00

Congratulations to the Mars Phoenix Lander team on successfully landing Phoenix in the arctic region of Mars. Well Done!!

2008-05-25T15:36:33-07:00

NASA TV is running coverage of Mars Phoenix Lander's descent to the surface of Mars... right NOW!

And.. of course... I'm watching. :) Longer posting later.

We're about 1.5 hours from the 7 minutes of terror...

Processing Paradigm: it's all about capacity

2008-03-26T16:59:38-07:00

When I was a kid anything that was a computer, or had one in it, was pretty obvious. Computers weren't "just everywhere". Now we've got multiple CPU chips on a board, multiple CPU cores on a chip, different kinds of cores on a single chip, multiple computer boards in a single chassis, ... it goes on. These things are embedded in everything around us, all this hardware glued together to achieve something.
This brings us to software. Software has to evolve to keep up with hardware, and with the needs of users. With all these cores and chips and boards and systems running around, it gets a bit confusing. Software is what enables everything from multi-processing to "poly-processing". There's a lot of buzzwords about it - SMP, AMP, POS, VOS, Real time kernel, Separation Kernels... but what does it all mean? And.. what's it for?

Eventually these things will all become even more blurry. As the realization that the "system" is a composite of the hardware and software all together spreads beyond the aerospace and defense industries, the various specifications will have to cover a fusion of SMP, AMP, and partitioned systems.

For now, though... what I'm talking about includes:
SMP - Symmetric Multi-Processing - two or more cores running out of the same RAM, each processing parts of a shared task. The cores may or may not run the same exact OS, but often do.
AMP - Asymmetric Multi-Processing - this is where several separate computers process data as parts of an overall larger system. They may briefly share data, or have a limited amount of shared memory, but other than this each computer is a separate processing node.
SMP is comparatively new, but AMP has been available through packages like vxMP for a long time.
SMP and AMP are multi-processor applications, where multiple computers are connected together to achieve a larger goal. They both bring up issues of concurrency, and offer their own challenges for the implementer.

Way on the other end of the scale are what might be called "poly-processing computers" partitioned systems, where a single computer is virtually carved up and treated as if it's really several computers. Each of those virtual computers can run a completely different OS - one for it's rich applications and ease of install, one for it's sophisticated communications abilities and firewall, perhaps even a third or forth to handle other kinds of processing. or devices. You can already share a PC between Windows and Linux (for example) using virtual machine software technologies. But did you know that similar things are being done with flight systems - using a single high-powered computer to replaces dozens of of single-purpose computers, to reduce weight, cost, and complexity?

SMP and AMP are for systems where one CPU can not possibly handle the work load before it. If the work can all be done in one "space" -simultaneously acquire data, process data in place, store data - SMP is a good fit, as all the processors run out of one pool of RAM. One processor can be tasked with managing / storing the pools of data, another can perform the processing-in-place.

If the work should be handled in separate spaces - say the processing can't be done in-place for whatever reason - AMP would be a better fit.

In the case of poly-processing (via vitalization, etc), this paradigm fits more where you want to take advantage of the extra processing power of a modern computer to have it replace a number of older computers (or other devices), to save on weight and expense of a newer system with similar function. A Good examples of this could come from the shipbuilding and aircraft industries, where you have multiple separate mechanical and computational systems that may easily be replaced with smaller, lighter, more capable modern electronics. Each of these separate systems might still need a small general purpose computer to control them, but that can be costly and add weight. A single, modern, high-powered computer may be able to replace dozens of smaller, less capable systems.

With any of these paradigms it all comes down to: what is your application, how does it need to be accomplished, and does your system have enough processing capacity to achieve your goals.

Four Years: Happy Birthday MERs!

2008-01-14T21:15:27-08:00

About four years ago a pair of robots, who began life as MER-A and MER-B, landed on Mars, starting a 90 day mission. That was one of the most exciting Januaries I've ever experienced! (It's hard to top the successful landings of two probes on another planet in 3 weeks!!)

About 5 months ago a planet-wide dust storm gave us cause for concern - it had the potential to kill both of the rovers. Happily both survived. In fact, the weather is why we've run so long - as much dust as the winds have dropped on our babies, the winds have also kept the panels clean enough to keep the rovers alive this long.

In two more weeks, there's a chance that Mars will get hit by an asteroid. Chances of a strike vary according to sources, but the inside bet is: it's going to be a fly by. In some ways scientists would really love to see a strike, to study an actual asteroid collision with a stony planet (not ours!). I'm kind of glad it's likely to be a miss, as fascinating as it would be (and yes, I'd watch with a telescope if I could), it'd be tragic if either of the rovers were lost because of it.

I wonder... if Spirit or Opportunity will get a chance to photograph an asteroid - perhaps a temporary neighbor to Phobos and Deimos - as a 4th birthday present?

In any case: Happy Fourth Birthday Spirit, Opportunity, and Congratulations MER Team!!

MESSENGER... Getting into the Swing

2008-01-14T20:51:49-08:00

Hello All

Today MESSENGER successfully made its first swing by Mercury. Mercury is as alien a world to us as any we really only know a large amount about our planet and our red neighbor, Mars. We probably know more about the Jovian planets than Mercury. As close as it is to the sun it's an incredibly hard study.

This maneuver is part of slowing-down to do long term studies of the planet. It's also our first look at the planet in over three decades. Believe it or not even a brief flyby like this will yield some important scientific data. It's going to take a lot more fly-bys and several years to compete the mission and the study, this is one more step along the way... a big one, though!

I'm proud that Wind River was able to help empower the MESSENGER team to achieve this goal and I hope they don't mind us helping spread the word...