Slashdot Mirror
Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover?
MrSeb writes "NASA's Curiosity rover has now been on the surface of Mars for just over a week. It hasn't moved an inch after landing, instead focusing on orienting itself (and NASA's scientists) by taking instrument readings and snapping images of its surroundings. The first beautiful full-color images of Gale Crater are starting to trickle in, and NASA has already picked out some interesting rock formations that it will investigate further in the next few days. Over the weekend and continuing throughout today, however, Curiosity is attempting something very risky indeed: A firmware upgrade. This got me thinking: If NASA can transmit new software to a Mars rover that's hundreds of millions of miles away... why can't a hacker do the same thing? In short, there's no reason a hacker couldn't take control of Curiosity, or lock NASA out. All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter — or, perhaps more realistically, you could hack into NASA's computer systems, which is exactly what Chinese hackers did 13 times in 2011."
Surely the OP doesn't think the DSN is on the Internet ? It sure wasn't when I worked with it, and that was at a time when that sort of protection might have seemed paranoid.
We've got plenty of satellites around here that can be updated remotely, and which don't required massive, high-gain antennas to reach.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Hackers hate challenges.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Does anyone know A)where Curiosity was born B)Curiosity's childhood pet C)Curiosity's mother's maiden name?
Curiosity no longer responds after firmware update
Using Hubble Telescope the only image they can see on top of the Rover is this image: http://agilemobility.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/stuck_on_activate_my_iphone_screen21.jpg
All you would need is your own massive 230-foot dish antenna and a 400-kilowatt transmitter
In that case, yes. Yes, I could.
The mars orbiters are already basically space wireless routers. If MRO weren't so broken, they'd have a high bandwidth relay link to earth through it.
The short range link between the lander and the orbiters is Proximity-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity-1_Space_Link_Protocol
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I've already configured my system to use Curiosity as anonymous proxy. They will never find me.
(obviously this message was posted 14 minutes ago)
Privacy is terrorism.
Good thing they're not provisioned by AT&T or Comcast, otherwise NASA would have to contend with artificial bandwidth caps. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Actually I think every /. reader already thought about the ideas of the summary least I did. Briefly, then thinking "it's probably encrypted" and not bothering further.
I would find it a huge shame if someone managed to ruin this project, by the way, and that person will be quite universally disliked...
This "firmware upgrade" really isn't that big of a deal. Obviously NASA doesn't want to screw it up but they do have experience in the past. One of the first upgrades they did was in the early 90s when they reprogrammed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to take photos of poorly-lit Uranus.
That craft had never been designed to last beyond Saturn, so they had to do some new ideas like leaving the camera shutter open for several minutes AND rotating the spacecraft at the same time to avoid image blur. They also upgraded the resolution & introduced image compression so they could store all the photos during the rapid flyby.
Plus wait a full workday (9 hours) to get a response from Voyager that said "success" or "fail" on the updates. This rover upgrade is likely easy in comparson.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Curiosity has 2GB of onboard radiation-hardened Flash storage - not enough to fit both the Flight software and the Rover software at the same time. So they devised a system where they would fly the rover to Mars with the Flight software, and considering they wouldn't be performing a return trip, decided that they could remote-wipe the flight data and install rover software in its place.
Due to Curiosity's nature, the onboard electronic systems need to be radiation-hardened. Not jjust "tin-foil cover" hardened. I'm talking engineered from the ground-up to resist data corruption from external radiation sources. This comes at extreme cost, both financially and physically. Every little bit of extra RAM or Flash storage adds weight to the rover unit, and by extent, tons (literally) of extra fuel to carry it that full 225,000,000km. It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?
I know you think you're being all geeky and clever, but seriously. If you aspire to second-guess every engineering decision that NASA makes, perhaps you should apply for a management position there.
.. they reprogrammed the Voyager 2 spacecraft to take photos of poorly-lit Uranus.
Couldn't they have just turned on the lights in the bathroom?
(Face it, you knew an ass joke was imminent.)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
-o ConnectTimeout=1860
I bricked my routeeeeeeer, but I did not brick curiosity!
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks