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Mars Rovers' Software Upgraded
cheros writes to note the news that NASA is upgrading the software in the Mars rovers to make them smarter in a number of ways. From the article: "The unexpected longevity of Spirit and Opportunity is giving the space agency a chance to field-test on Mars some new capabilities useful both to these missions and future rovers. Spirit will begin its fourth year on Mars on Jan. 3 (PST); Opportunity on Jan. 24. In addition to their continuing scientific observations, they are now testing four new skills included in revised flight software uploaded to their onboard computers."
After they pulled off two landings, and perhaps right after they they revived one of the rovers from a perpetual reboot error (the ultimate remote bios fix) and before the dust devils cleaned their solar panels, before they unstuck one from a sand dune, and even before the 3 month mission went 3 YEARS...
If you buy all that, you'll buy O.J's book where he searches for the real killer. This is precisely the public relations NASA bought with their two "Mars" rovers in Nevada, informally dubbed Capricorn 2 and Capricorn 3.
Even Stephen Hawking is saying the future of space exploration has to be colonization.
We have people in Antarctica but it's still just an expensive way to get the 411 on that continent. No one is talking about a real self-supporting colony even on Antarctica, which has air and H20 and earth gravity, let alone on the moon, which does not. In short, you can't have a colony unless you have oil or slaves or tobacco to exploit.