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The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander

Posted by timothy on from the distant-robot-friends dept.

chromatic writes "Imagine managing a million lines of code to send over seven hundred pounds of equipment millions of miles through space to land safely on Mars and perform dozens of experiments. You have C, 128 MB of RAM, and very few opportunities to retry if you get it wrong. O'Reilly News interviewed Peter Gluck, project software engineer for NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, about the process of writing software and managing these constraints — and why you're unlikely to see the source code to the project any time soon."

4 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. 128MB? by Thelasko · · Score: 0, Redundant

    No one could need more than 640 K of Memory

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re:128MB? by Thelasko · · Score: 0, Redundant

      How can a first post be modded redundant?

      P.S. TFA is Slashdotted

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  2. Huh. by FrameRotBlues · · Score: 0, Redundant

    128 MB? I thought 640K was more than anyone would ever need...

  3. Re:Great software! by rvw · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Does it run on linux?

    Well I'm glad it didn't run Windows for Workgroups 3.11, because then they wouldn't get any support anymore over there on Mars!