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Upgrading Software From 350 Million Miles Away
CWmike writes "Picture doing a remote software upgrade. Now picture doing it when the machine you're upgrading is a robotic rover sitting 350 million miles away, on the surface of Mars. That's what a team of programmers and engineers at NASA are dealing with as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity, which landed safely on the Red Planet earlier this week. 'We need to take a whole series of steps to make that software active. You have to imagine that if something goes wrong with this, it could be the last time you hear from the rover,' said Steve Scandore, a senior flight software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'It has to work,' he told Computerworld. 'You don't' want to be known as the guy doing the last activity on the rover before you lose contact.'"
There is this global media obsession with referring to Mars as "The Red Planet". It is really irritating.
Mars has a name, just like all the other planets in our solar system: Its name is "Mars". So use it, and respect the planet and its name.
It's so irritating and "media lovvie". Also, the planet it not really "red" at all. It's brown. It belongs in exactly the same category as media types referring to scientists as "boffins". It's RUDE and DISRESPECTFUL.
I wish the media would shed this ridiculous obsession with ignoring the name of the planet MARS.
"Absorbing your worst..."