Wind River Blog Network

MSL: How Big Is It?

By Mike Deliman

I’ve been asked here and there “Just how big is this MSL thing?”

It’s a question I can give several answers to, depending on what the asker means.  In physical terms, you could ride on it.  Here is a good example…in this photo of a worker and MSL, you can see the cruise shell is large enough to house a small couch with more than one person sitting on it.  The rover itself is quite large, I’d imagine good comparisons would be something on the order of a ride-on tractor-mower. 

But that isn’t really the only answer.  In scientific terms, this is huge.  This rover is a well-equipped geological laboratory on wheels.  It carries equipment every high-school and university would be proud to have available.  Laser spectrometer, chemical analyzers, close-up and long-distance cameras, not to mention an advanced autonomous robot running it all.  Any of these tools would be excellent for investigating or teaching/learning about the earth.

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All Your Mars are Belong to US!

By Mike Deliman

It's time to celebrate. We have returned to Mars with the most complex roving robotic laboratory ever sent to another planet. We have demonstrated and proved the Sky Crane concept, which opens doors onto other worlds that we have never had before. We can successfully deliver 1 metric ton to the surface of Mars.

This is an achievement beyond words. A new day is dawning on Mars, a day marked with the ability to achieve incredible scientific goals. A team of over 7000 individuals made this happen. A true testament to humankind. None of these contributors could have done this without the support of their families and significant others.  And I am extremely proud to work for Wind River, a company whose technology helped make all of this possible.

I'm a California boy. It takes someone very special to have this kind of draw, to pull me to Indiana.  Here we are.  It’s late.  This is a historic evening.

All times in Central time (Valparaiso, Indiana):

10:30pm - we tuned in to the press transmissions on both NASA-TV and USTREAM on JPL channel 3. We spent the next several hours toggling between the audio feeds, glued to the monitor.

10:40 pm - DSN ready to relay signals. EDL team is getting setup. EDL "tone screens" were being finalized. Chatter in the flight control room was muted.

10:52 pm - Mars View from MSL is about 20 degrees - she's getting close.

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In embedded systems, a lifetime is a long time

By Bill Graham

The recent news about the demise of the Mars Rover Spirit (Mike Deliman blogged about this last week) and comments about how it succeeded its mission many times over, got me thinking about just how long product lifetimes are for embedded products (see "End of Mars mission: Way beyond warranty" by Bob McDonald at the CBC). In many industries using embedded software to control devices, the expected lifespan is decades which contrasts sharply to consumer devices where either software is upgraded constantly or we dispose of the device in a few years. On the other hand, embedded systems often exceed originally planned lifespans many times over. Case in point is the Mars Rover program, where Spirit operated six years beyond its original mission plan and rover Opportunity continues operation, surviving a harrowing journey and landing and a harsh Martian environment for so many years.

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And Then There Was One

By Mike Deliman

NASA concludes attempts to contact Mars Rover 'Spirit'

Last night the news of Spirit's mission coming to a close hit my mailbox.

For me, her journey started about eleven years ago.  A call from JPL came to my office phone, it was Glenn.  "Mike, we're putting the team back together, we're going back to Mars."

Those words were like music to my ears.  At the time, when completing the Mars Pathfinder project the thought occurred..."this, then, is the pinnacle of my career, the point  where I can mark as the top of my achievements."  This call changed all of that. There were other projects along the way, Gravity-Probe B and others, but Pathfinder had been fantastic!

Over 3 long years we worked as a team, cogs in a bigger machine making something incredible.  We all put in long hours, working all day on our mission, dreaming at night of what we were working on (it's a human thing).  They began to take on personalities of their own, MER-A being feisty as the "older twin", MER-B cooperating and living the charmed life of the youngest child.  Then came the competition where the children gave our babies their names - Spirit and  Opportunity.  These seemed to be very fitting of our offspring, Spirit surely was full of fitfulness, where as Opportunity was always moving forward.

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The Best Software On Any Planet

By Mike Deliman

In 1995, after finishing up on a particularly challenging project, my boss came to me with a new project.  He asked, “Have you ever heard of Jet Propulsion Laboratory?   Would you like to work with them?”  Without hesitation, I jumped at the offer to sign on.

 I grew up not too far from JPL, and as a child I was a big fan of the space industry, as well as the TV show Star Trek.  I not only knew that JPL was part of NASA, but also that JPL made space probes. 

This was my first real space project.  At the time, I was the most junior member of the team.  Our team was comprised of several engineers at JPL, several at Loral Federal Space Systems, and a handful of folks at Wind River.  The mission was Mars Pathfinder, the first attempt from NASA to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software and a COTS computer to put a robot on another planet.  I was honored to join the team.

The plan was to build a robot that would land on the surface of Mars, and perform some science experiments.  A remote-control rover was added to the payload.  The robot was to land on Mars and operate in-situ for a month.   Our task was to port the VxWorks operating system to this processor, new to us, for the first time.  The processor was based on the IBM RS6000.

This task was a top-to-bottom port of the operating system to the CPU.  This required an in-depth understanding of how the CPU operated on all levels, and an understanding of the division between the CPU, Board Support, and the OS itself.  It even required understanding how various compiler tools handled the ABI, and later the EABI, for the architecture.  I had never worked on a complete architecture port before this.

This was – to that point in time – the most demanding job I had ever done.  And it was the most fun, as well as the most cooperative team I’d worked with.  I learned an incredible amount, enough to tie-together everything I’d learned about computing in university, and more.

We worked some incredibly long hours, and made our milestones and deliveries.  In December of 1996, we were invited to the product launch proceedings at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  As special guests, we had passes to park near the launch area and sit in grandstands just 5 miles away from the pad. It was an awe-inspiring sight. I felt like a real VIP.

In July 1997, I attended the landing ceremonies for family and friends of Pathfinder at JPL in Pasadena.  When the first image came back from Mars, the entire assembly erupted in fantastic celebration – we had landed on Mars!

Happy anniversary Wind River!

Rendezvous with a Rock

By Mike Deliman

MESSENGER spacecraft is approaching it's rendezvous with Mercury.  After flying for over 2400 days, in a little over 24 hours (from writing this)  MESSENGER will maneuver into orbit, the first time a satellite has orbited Mercury.  We hope to learn a lot about the composition of the surface and effects of solar weathering of the surface.  And there's the prospect of photographing the sun-side of the planet for the fist time!

In a few months, Dawn spacecraft will orbit Asteroid Vesta - the first time we've orbited an asteroid.  We hope to learn more about the composition of asteroids.   (We've landed on one, but technically it's harder to orbit than to land.  We've also successfully landed on a comet with Deep Imact...)  Dawn has not been in flight as long as MESSENGER, but it's orbital attempt is none the less impressive (Vesta is much smaller than Mercury).

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Autonomy and Robotic Advancement

By Mike Deliman

A few months ago at the Robotics Virtual Trade Show, in my presentation I spoke about the evolution of robotic systems.  One thing I predicted was as time goes on, robots will become more independent and autonomous, performing more of the work humans and mainframe-style systems have traditionally performed.  

Among the robots I talked about were robots similar to NASA's 
Stardust Spacecraft  Stardust is currently on course for a Valentine's Day rendezvous with Comet Temple-1.  Stardust includes a package that performs autonomous navigation, d to help keep the craft on it's flight path with reduced intrusion from ground-based systems.  Since Stardust is so far out from earth, there is significant delay in round-trip communications.  Stardust is able to detect problems in trajectory and perform course correction maneuvers on its own.

Last week, Northrop Grumman had  first-flight for an evolution in Un-maned Aerial Vehicles.  The 
X47B UCAS   is an autonomous unmanned flight system.  It is not a wireless-joystick system.  It flies itself, taking off, figuring a course to it's way points, landing.  Without human intervention.

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COTS in Space: Enter The Dragon

By Mike Deliman

Congratulations to Space Exploration Technologies Inc, on their successful venture into orbit.  By launching the Dragon into orbit, successfully orbiting the earth more than once, and returning to the ground, you've made history.

I wish I could have watched the launch and later the landing.  This is absolutely a historic event.

Given the cancellation of the Ares projects, and the recent failure of the launch of the GLONASS satellites, it would seem SpaceX has impeccable timing.

I don't think there was really a question about weather or not commercial entities could handle space exploration and the creation of rockets.  One of the big questions was "could it be done safely without all the oversight?" 

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Laws of Robotics

By Alex Wilson

As a member of the UK Institute of Engineering and Technology, and a keen science fiction fan, it is always great fun when I see mention of advanced robotics applications in space!

This month sees the article by Piers Bizony on "Robonaut flies in". This is a great article outlining the mission on the NASA Robonaut. Robonaut was included in NASA's STS-133 payload for testing on the International Space Station.  

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