The further question is, if humans aren't as accurate as the computer, how are they measuring the accuracy at all? That is, how do they know that the 1 in 6250 messages is wrong, if a human, known to be inaccurate, was testing for accuracy?
I believe that humans can be 100% accurate (or thereabouts) if they read the *ENTIRE* message, however that's exactly the point - if you have to read an entire message to tell that it's spam, the spam has succeeded.
Their number probably concerns how people can tell without reading the entire message whether or not the message is spam. My brother accidentally deleted a few messages I had sent to him, however if he had read them fully he would have known they were legit.
>> Blaming the government for taking more power is rediculous, the government only has the power that we give to them.
Now you're just being naive. The Government passes the laws detailing how much power it is. In the US they are occasionally constrained by the constitution; in other countries not even by that. It's a rare and unusual step for any Government to intentionally reduce its power - such reductions invariably come through mass civil disobedience (violent or otherwise) and not through the standard democratic process.
So you are saying that, if, say in the next elections 75% of the candidates that won were, say, libertarian or independent of some kind that were commmitted to reducing the government, that there would be a massive conspiracy to keep them out of government? If the majority of election winners were refused seating, *THAT* would start a revolution. The only thing I can think of is the "secret" government organizations not going away so easily. Do you *REALLY* think that if the totality of the population agreed the government was out of hand, and voted appropriately, that the leaders in power would be so bold as to deny the results?
Yes it's a stretch to think that many people could agree on anything, but it's quite possible if someone in the government majorly stepped over the acceptability line in a public way they could be drawn to replace our current government.
I realize this rarely happens (democracies rarely get so out of hand that drastic measures are necessary, in part because it is not a stable thing for democracies to do).
Yeah, all those "successful" SDI tests, right?
Now the problem becomes convincing any potential adversaries that they need to tell us when and where they plan to attack, and, oh yes.... would they mind terribly putting a radar beacon on any incoming warheads?
First of all it was not a radar beacon, and it wasn't tracked by the interceptor, it was used to supplement the remote tracking part of the system (which was not finished yet).
In another post I linked to this article. Do some extra research if you like.
Tracking a missile is not nearly as hard as controlling an interceptor - that was the part the system did not "cheat" at.
I would suggest that you check up on the science behind these tests... I cannot believe the ignorance that is being modded up on slashdot (not that it is your fault, this was not given a lot of coverage).
Are you serious? You really think Star Wars works? What are the "successful tests" you refer to - the ones where the missile had an attached radio beacon?
*ahem* The primary difficulty in missile interception is that missiles tend to be small objects moving at extremely high velocities. This requires a control system that can react on millisecond timescales, with an accuracy level that's almost rediculous. The integrated commuincations/control system is by far the most difficult part, we've had missile tracking systems for decades.
Why don't you try reading this link: at Salon. If you do not believe that, I'd suggest further research. To summarize the link says that:
The GPS beacon did not give them any information that would not have during normal circumstances through radar etc (that part of the system wasn't built yet).
The kill vehicle couldn't home in on the signal, it only used externally supplied data, as in a real situation.
The GPS beacon was necesssary for the tracking of the results of the test. The beacon provided confirmation of the kill.
I'm really tired of people who do not understand the complexity of military interception systems downplaying the accomplishments our military has made.
Whether or not you agree that Star Wars was a good idea, it's clear that it's quite a technological achievement. The equations alone would blow most of slashdotter's minds:)
Disclaimer: i'm not a rocket scientist (yet). A few more years to go:)
Look at the way we tried to circumvent basic rights in this country by declaring people "enemy combatants".
I really don't agree with a lot of what this government (and the last, and the last) have been doing, however I'm really tired of people making a big deal about this "enemy combatant" thing. The people that everyone was whining about not being granted "Prisoner of War" status do not fit the definition of POW in Article IV of the Geneva Convention. The convention states that they must either be a regular member of official armed forces, or fufill all the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The people that were being detained, terrorist or not, do not fit that definition. To grant them that legal status would be to dilute its meaning. POW is a very specific legal term and I do not see anything wrong with this administration refusing to use it.
Of course there are issues with how the people in Cuba were treated, no matter who they were.
Our constitution is very clear on what rights of our citizens may not be abridged, however I do not believe it grants those same rights to foreign criminals. Maybe it should however these "basic rights" aren't protected the same way as they are for US citizens.
Why do we need special exceptions for different types of criminals?
Most criminals don't try to kill 40000 people at once. Most criminals are interested in making money or getting personal revenge, not on causing destruction on a scale that could reach millions. Terrorists are not simple criminals, they are enemies of the state that operate in a psuedo-warlike fashion, and should be treated as such.
I do agree that governments in general tend to expand their powers when possible. Our constitution is designed to prevent things like this however it's often not properly applied. However it's also clear that our democratic system of government has been very successful at recovering from power-madness... Look at things like the Sedition Act that are no longer around... the Patriot Act wouldn't have flown without the terrorism, and eventually when things settle down in the world laws like that will be re-examined.
If the law isn't enforced or renewed, it dies - NO EXCEPTIONS.
I agree that it'd be great to have manditory renewals on laws, however there are a multitude of problems with this:
The amount of laws in this country is simply astounding. If Congress had to revist each and every one, we would have no time for passing new, more relevant laws.
As the balance of power on Capital Hill changes, this will almost guarantee that the laws will fluctuate rapidly from election to election. Our government was set up to be slow and steady, not quick, radical, and flighty.
Having many laws changing makes a lot of issues, and I don't just mean lawyers being stuck up late at night. It's already difficult to expect people to know the laws they are bound by, and changing them constantly will make this almost impossible. Not to mention the cost to businessees who have to change wordings in contracts or business practices all the time. Businesses happen to have this great habit of passing costs to the consumers. This sounds bad for everyone.
Also I think that having laws being temporary by nature encourages them to be more radical, which gives us thigns like the Patriot Act.
As of right now the public already has a way to strike down laws that are terrible: constitutional amendment. 3/4ths of state conventions on an amendment is what is required according to the constitution, and if a law is really so hideous as to offend the entire population they will be quickly struck down
NASA has the unfortunate habit of framing everything in terms of firsts and records, as if space exploration was some sort of spectator sport. I've lost count of how often I've seen the headline "Hubble spies oldest galaxy".
I agree that it is sometimes a bit cliche, however there are many scientific reasons to be concerned about these "records." Record-setting missions do not merely mark achievements, they also provide data in regimes not previously explored. The "oldest known galaxy" being observed at provides us with a valuable data point, one which is unique at the time of the writing. No one wants to hear that "Hubble Finds Galaxies Just Like Every Other Galaxy" or "Spirit Finds Another Rock". News is about what is *NEW*. People are interested in occurances which are novel, different, and exciting.
NASA is dedicated to pushing the envelope in science and engineering. There are many obstacles in space exploration and I for one see absolutely nothing wrong with being happy/excited that we have overcome the numerous significant problems to do what we do. Spirit has the most advanced autnomous navigation software of any (declassified) space probe yet, and it is awesome to see that it is working very well! Also, spirit is in an area that makes mobility a bit difficult as there are many rocks that it must detect.
It is my opinion (and not necessarily that of NASA) that NASA PR should seek to provide a multi-tier service which caters not merely to the lowest common denominator, but also the the more scientifically inclinded citizens who seek more details.
What NASA really needs is a tool to filter all superlatives from its press releases.
Superlatives are why we are there. If we want things that are ordinary, we can stay stuck here on earth for the next 5 billion years.
1. The large amount of oxygen on Earth is a result of the the presence of life, not a prerequisite for it.
I believe the original poster was refering to the presence of the element, not its gaseous diatomic form. His point is that carbon and oxygen are abundant elements and have *very* favorable properties that lead to the natural creation of extremely complex, self-repeating molecules. The presence or absence of life does not, to our knowlege, transmute elements.
2. Even if a particular element has a low universal abundance, there can still be a local concentration of it high enough to "kickstart life" (as might be the case with silicon and sulpher on Europa)
What you are saying is strictly true, however it severely reduces the probability that such life is anywhere in our "local vicinity".
Most of the guys I work with at NASA aren't that hopeful that we'll find life on Europa... however we'll never know unless we try.
And if that doesn't work out, we might get some interesting results from the Terrestrial Planet Finder.
No problem... So many folks at NASA love open source (we're not allowed to promote it seriously though, because we're government) and it's great that we're finally taking an initiative to give back to the community. ITAR has been a real pain in the neck for this kind of stuff, but to me it's worth it by far.
Still not sure what liscense we'll be using for Maestro, maybe it will be this new NASA one (I heard about it first on slashdot, but open sourcing our software isn't my task so that's not surprising).
I enjoy giving an "insider" view on slashdot, but as always take what I say with just a hint of salt (see my other posts) because I'm not a decision maker.
The thing about it is that it seems that any NASA source code would be a monument to overbuilt, overengineered, triply-redundant failsafeness.
What you say may be true for some software at NASA (I have seen some of the flight software for MER, though it was kinematics stuff that didn't appear "overengineered" at all) however much of the software written here remains on the ground, and is used for things like planning and data analysis.
No fancy classes or object-orientedness. None of this fun stuff. Just raw, uninteresting, bulletproof code
The tool that I have worked on, Science Activity Planner for MER (which has a public version named Maestro, and will be open sourced later this year) is written in Java and is extremely object oriented in nature. It has all kinds of interesting data structures which are use dfor things like resource contraint simulation, and three dimensional geometry, etc... It's a browser based design and it showcases a unified concept of "content" to be displayed to and manipulated by the user.
My question is: how much would we learn from this?
Well, it contains new and interesting algorithms for on-the-fly image processing, along with plenty of great examples of data visualization. The graph-propagation driven simulation engine would seem to be of interest to all those with a bit of a CS bent... We also have a simple but effective example of a use for RDBMS persitence of java objects as a means of real-time collaboration and sychronization of aspects of planning.
Also tools like APGEN etc have *excellent* examples of things like Constraint Satisfaction Problem solvers in action... solving real life problems and interfacing with users, rather than simply being an accademic curiosity.
I also think people could learn a thing or two from some of MIPL's image processing algorithms... They are efficient and effective, and are built around a massively parallel dataflow "pipeline" system, one which is quite a useful paradigm for many kinds of business software.
Also, I think that in today's world of software engineering, a little more emphisis on making things "bulletproof" wouldn't hurt. Maybe going to the lengths NASA does is rediculous for most software, however even just adding a few tricks here and there could really improve the current state of programming.
Just remember that all NASA code is not necessarily flight code... some of the coolest stuff stays here on planet Earth:)
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Kill the mars program and fix the Hubble.
We will go more places this way.
Are you kidding? First of all, science is about a diversity of observations. Space based optical wavelength, small telescope astronomy is nice, however it provides only a tiny portion of the measurements needed to understand the universe. The observations that we are making on Mars could seal the case that life is probable to exist elsewhere in the universe, perhaps even nearby! The Hubble, currently, can do little in the way of the search for life or habitable planets.
Secondly, the hubble is an ancient piece of technology. The money used to run the program is better spent on new, much more powerful types of observatories, for instance
Gossamer Telescopes, next generation x-ray observatories, or the Terrestrial Planet Finder. For exploring the furthest reaches of the universe, you must use infrared telescopes like the James Webb Telescope due to the massive redshift. Also it is important to set up a method of making groundbreaking observations of gravitional waves using something like LISA is essential to furthering our understanding of general relativity and cosmology. Also planetary exploration helps us develop propulsion systems that will eventually be used to launch interstellar probes.
There's so much to explore, and we're never going to make progress by continuously dumping money into a dying technology... Hubble's service record has been amazing, especially considering its flaws, however it is time to move on, to discover new and different things that Hubble cannot see.
Eliminating planetary science in order to take more pretty pictures, IMHO, is unacceptable. I'm glad to see that NASA agrees with this.
Disclaimer: I work on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, so I'm a little biased:)
before anyone gets excited because of "Justin Wick"'s signature, realize he is not really a NASA scientist but a little intern guy.
The above poster is correct. I state clearly in my Slashdot info that I am a university student. I have been working on MER since I was a freshman, and I have spent the last 3 years developing portions of the GDS software used by the scientists. (GDS = Ground Data Systems). I am one semester away from my degree in Applied Physics.
Yes, I am an intern, however I have been doing this long enough as to actually have some idea of what I am doing. When I post in a semioffical capacity, I try to stay within my realm of expertise, or synthesize information that was stated previously by someone who knows what they are talking about.
I'm merely trying to provide some "insider" views to slashdot. The big guys on the mission tend to have a few better things to do than post to slashdot, so I do:)
Wow, what can I say? I'm in building 264 here at JPL and it's way past our bed time, but that's not stopping everyone from enjoying the new images! The enthusiasm here is just incredible; I've never been so on the edge of my seat as I was as I waited for my script to automatically bring up the first image processed from Mars.
Steve Squyres (the principle investigator) is quite excited about the position of the rover... It's insane how many geologically interesting features are nearby the rover, especially considering it was a safe landing site. To quote the press conference, "It's like trying to land in Oklahoma and hope to find the Grand Canyon." It's simply amazing the details we are seeing on even the most compressed of images!
Geologists are excited, engineers are excited... Even people that don't know anything about geology (like myself) realize how important it is to find outcroppings like this... allowing us to see the stratigraphy of the local site... looking back millions of years into the past, it's incredible! I personally hope that we RAT the outcroppings. We're already seeing some hints of layering there... hmm...
But most exciting of all is the chance, as Steve Squyres mentioned, that we could be inside a crater. That would be an incredibly awesome place to start... The chance to study craters up close will be invaluable to our future interpretation of cratered worlds.
Once again I cannot get accross how cool all of this is. Thanks so much to all of you out there who are interested in this stuff... even if it is just which OS the rover runs:)
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Just to let you know what sort of effect you guys have on the world.. I'm watching your guys right now on live web cast.. from Perth in Western Australia, and I gotta say.. I'm damned impressed with your accomplishments..
Well done guys and congrats..
Austrailia has been a wonderful friend to the US, and the Canberra installation has been invaluable to many space missions. Thanks for all your help from down under!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Good on ya', Justin, but isn't it a bit premature to be calling this a success?
Though there are challenges on mars each new day, every inch of ground we take, every meter of atmosphere we penetrate, every bit of data sent back is indeed a success of modern science, engineering, and planning. There can be no doubt about this. Many critics of the space program (not that I suggest that you are one of them) do not realize the tremendous number of things that must go precisely right for a mission to go well.
We have landed a working vehicle on mars, and have received communications from it. That alone is, without a doubt, worth celebrating.
Yes there are many more things that must still be done, and perhaps we will fail at one or more of those. But tonight we have succeeded, and that cannot be taken away from us.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Well, as a software engineer on MER, I must say that I and my collegues are all thrilled to see yet another success! NASA's Mars program has needed a success like this, and we are thrilled to get yet another chance to explore Mars.
I would like to thank all of the other engineers and scientists that have worked on this mission... many of which worked untold hours of unpaid overtime to do the things that the budgets couldn't afford (and that the mission couldn't live without).
I'd like to thank the leaders of our nation for giving us the resources to accomplish this feat, and their support politically.
But most importantly I'd like to thank the public for their interest, excitement, and moral/fiscal support. We're doing this for you and your children, that they might understand the universe better. Thanks for all of the fans out there!
Oh, and if you haven't already, now is a great time to grab Maestro, NASA's public science tool for visualizing mars data (which I helped to develop).
What a great night!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
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News from Mars
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· Score: 1
(yes, I know it's more than an image browser; I don't mean to denigrate it; that's just what I use it for;-)
Most of my work was with the downlink browser, so I don't care if you use any of Jeff's stuff. Okay so I did shared targets too (and that was a ton of work to get right as well).
Cheers,
Justin
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
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News from Mars
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· Score: 1
Hey Scott,
Since you went into a bit of detail about your work, I'll tell slashdot a little about RSVP's planning counterpart, Science Activity Planner.
Science Activity Planner is used by scientists for planning before the Science Operational Working Group meeting, in which the final plans are made on SAP.
Scientists can visualize doownlinked data products and create high-level plans which are then later converted to sequences by the sequencing team using RSVP and a few other tools (like MAPGEN).
RSVP is aimed towards the engineering aspects of seqwuencing, and has precise simulation, etc. SAP is aimed towards the scientific part of the process, that is designating high level targets, analysing data that's come down, and planning things in a somewhat rough level.
We also have a 3D visualization environment which isn't too bad (especially considering it's Java3D!) Our simulation is much rougher (but very fast) and is used to give scientists a good idea of what their plans will do, and leave the details to the sequencing team.
The public version of Science Activity Planner is known as Maestro and can be downloaded at Maestro Headquarters. It has essentially the same functionalities, however the data is significantly compressed, and of course the planning has had all the sensitive bits removed.
It's really amazing all the effort that goes into one day on mars, from examing the data to sending the final sequence. Too bad there's no public version of RSVP, otherwise everyone could see how awesome it is:)
Cheers,
Justin Wick,
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
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News from Mars
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· Score: 5, Informative
Is it true that spirit makes use of Java? Or does only the "client" software used to control it,use Java.
Much software ON THE GROUND at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is written in Java, but not software on the spacecraft.
I wrote some of the software used for the mission in Java, and it worked very well for our purposes, namely due to platform independence and quick development time. We had a heck of a time with some of the GUI code, however.
The rover runs VxWorks from Wind River. Very solid.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
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News from Mars
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Not to bring down the Spirit guys or their great work, but their talk of pioneering 30cm moves sound a bit dull compared with Lunokhod, or the Pathfinder.
Oh come on, you can't compare a an ancient real-time controlled rover like Lunokhod to an autonomous, self-navigating rover like Spirit. Spirit could easily run around all over the place if a human were driving it, that's not the challenge. The challenge is the navigation and safety aspects, and without a human controlling it one has to be very conservative.
Also remember that sunlight is much dimmer out on Mars than it is on the moon, adn the gravity is higher, thus speeds tend to be slower.
And as for pathfinder, the rover had almost no science instrumentation, and it got stuck.
I know comparing apples and oranges is a slashdot favorite, but please don't put down an engineering triumph because you don't understand the differences in mission parameters!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Slashdot Mirror
The further question is, if humans aren't as accurate as the computer, how are they measuring the accuracy at all? That is, how do they know that the 1 in 6250 messages is wrong, if a human, known to be inaccurate, was testing for accuracy?
I believe that humans can be 100% accurate (or thereabouts) if they read the *ENTIRE* message, however that's exactly the point - if you have to read an entire message to tell that it's spam, the spam has succeeded.
Their number probably concerns how people can tell without reading the entire message whether or not the message is spam. My brother accidentally deleted a few messages I had sent to him, however if he had read them fully he would have known they were legit.
Cheers,
Justin
>> Blaming the government for taking more power is rediculous, the government only has the power that we give to them.
Now you're just being naive. The Government passes the laws detailing how much power it is. In the US they are occasionally constrained by the constitution; in other countries not even by that. It's a rare and unusual step for any Government to intentionally reduce its power - such reductions invariably come through mass civil disobedience (violent or otherwise) and not through the standard democratic process.
So you are saying that, if, say in the next elections 75% of the candidates that won were, say, libertarian or independent of some kind that were commmitted to reducing the government, that there would be a massive conspiracy to keep them out of government? If the majority of election winners were refused seating, *THAT* would start a revolution. The only thing I can think of is the "secret" government organizations not going away so easily. Do you *REALLY* think that if the totality of the population agreed the government was out of hand, and voted appropriately, that the leaders in power would be so bold as to deny the results?
Yes it's a stretch to think that many people could agree on anything, but it's quite possible if someone in the government majorly stepped over the acceptability line in a public way they could be drawn to replace our current government.
I realize this rarely happens (democracies rarely get so out of hand that drastic measures are necessary, in part because it is not a stable thing for democracies to do).
Cheers,
Justin
I was responding to the science in his post, not the politics.
The system is clearly not ready, however the concept has been proven - it *CAN* work. We've got the hard part figured out.
Cheers,
Justin
Yeah, all those "successful" SDI tests, right? Now the problem becomes convincing any potential adversaries that they need to tell us when and where they plan to attack, and, oh yes.... would they mind terribly putting a radar beacon on any incoming warheads?
First of all it was not a radar beacon, and it wasn't tracked by the interceptor, it was used to supplement the remote tracking part of the system (which was not finished yet).
In another post I linked to this article. Do some extra research if you like.
Tracking a missile is not nearly as hard as controlling an interceptor - that was the part the system did not "cheat" at.
I would suggest that you check up on the science behind these tests... I cannot believe the ignorance that is being modded up on slashdot (not that it is your fault, this was not given a lot of coverage).
Cheers,
Justin
*ahem* The primary difficulty in missile interception is that missiles tend to be small objects moving at extremely high velocities. This requires a control system that can react on millisecond timescales, with an accuracy level that's almost rediculous. The integrated commuincations/control system is by far the most difficult part, we've had missile tracking systems for decades.
Why don't you try reading this link: at Salon. If you do not believe that, I'd suggest further research. To summarize the link says that:
I'm really tired of people who do not understand the complexity of military interception systems downplaying the accomplishments our military has made.
Whether or not you agree that Star Wars was a good idea, it's clear that it's quite a technological achievement. The equations alone would blow most of slashdotter's minds
Disclaimer: i'm not a rocket scientist (yet). A few more years to go
Cheers,
Justin Wick
I really don't agree with a lot of what this government (and the last, and the last) have been doing, however I'm really tired of people making a big deal about this "enemy combatant" thing. The people that everyone was whining about not being granted "Prisoner of War" status do not fit the definition of POW in Article IV of the Geneva Convention. The convention states that they must either be a regular member of official armed forces, or fufill all the following conditions:
The people that were being detained, terrorist or not, do not fit that definition. To grant them that legal status would be to dilute its meaning. POW is a very specific legal term and I do not see anything wrong with this administration refusing to use it.
Of course there are issues with how the people in Cuba were treated, no matter who they were.
Our constitution is very clear on what rights of our citizens may not be abridged, however I do not believe it grants those same rights to foreign criminals. Maybe it should however these "basic rights" aren't protected the same way as they are for US citizens.
Why do we need special exceptions for different types of criminals?
Most criminals don't try to kill 40000 people at once. Most criminals are interested in making money or getting personal revenge, not on causing destruction on a scale that could reach millions. Terrorists are not simple criminals, they are enemies of the state that operate in a psuedo-warlike fashion, and should be treated as such.
I do agree that governments in general tend to expand their powers when possible. Our constitution is designed to prevent things like this however it's often not properly applied. However it's also clear that our democratic system of government has been very successful at recovering from power-madness... Look at things like the Sedition Act that are no longer around... the Patriot Act wouldn't have flown without the terrorism, and eventually when things settle down in the world laws like that will be re-examined.
If the law isn't enforced or renewed, it dies - NO EXCEPTIONS. I agree that it'd be great to have manditory renewals on laws, however there are a multitude of problems with this:
NASA has the unfortunate habit of framing everything in terms of firsts and records, as if space exploration was some sort of spectator sport. I've lost count of how often I've seen the headline "Hubble spies oldest galaxy".
I agree that it is sometimes a bit cliche, however there are many scientific reasons to be concerned about these "records." Record-setting missions do not merely mark achievements, they also provide data in regimes not previously explored. The "oldest known galaxy" being observed at provides us with a valuable data point, one which is unique at the time of the writing. No one wants to hear that "Hubble Finds Galaxies Just Like Every Other Galaxy" or "Spirit Finds Another Rock". News is about what is *NEW*. People are interested in occurances which are novel, different, and exciting.
NASA is dedicated to pushing the envelope in science and engineering. There are many obstacles in space exploration and I for one see absolutely nothing wrong with being happy/excited that we have overcome the numerous significant problems to do what we do. Spirit has the most advanced autnomous navigation software of any (declassified) space probe yet, and it is awesome to see that it is working very well! Also, spirit is in an area that makes mobility a bit difficult as there are many rocks that it must detect.
It is my opinion (and not necessarily that of NASA) that NASA PR should seek to provide a multi-tier service which caters not merely to the lowest common denominator, but also the the more scientifically inclinded citizens who seek more details.
What NASA really needs is a tool to filter all superlatives from its press releases.
Superlatives are why we are there. If we want things that are ordinary, we can stay stuck here on earth for the next 5 billion years.
Disclaimer: I work on MER as a software engineer.
Cheers,
Justin
1. The large amount of oxygen on Earth is a result of the the presence of life, not a prerequisite for it.
I believe the original poster was refering to the presence of the element, not its gaseous diatomic form. His point is that carbon and oxygen are abundant elements and have *very* favorable properties that lead to the natural creation of extremely complex, self-repeating molecules. The presence or absence of life does not, to our knowlege, transmute elements.
2. Even if a particular element has a low universal abundance, there can still be a local concentration of it high enough to "kickstart life" (as might be the case with silicon and sulpher on Europa)
What you are saying is strictly true, however it severely reduces the probability that such life is anywhere in our "local vicinity".
Most of the guys I work with at NASA aren't that hopeful that we'll find life on Europa... however we'll never know unless we try.
And if that doesn't work out, we might get some interesting results from the Terrestrial Planet Finder.
Cheers,
Justin
No problem... So many folks at NASA love open source (we're not allowed to promote it seriously though, because we're government) and it's great that we're finally taking an initiative to give back to the community. ITAR has been a real pain in the neck for this kind of stuff, but to me it's worth it by far.
Still not sure what liscense we'll be using for Maestro, maybe it will be this new NASA one (I heard about it first on slashdot, but open sourcing our software isn't my task so that's not surprising).
I enjoy giving an "insider" view on slashdot, but as always take what I say with just a hint of salt (see my other posts) because I'm not a decision maker.
Cheers,
Justin
The thing about it is that it seems that any NASA source code would be a monument to overbuilt, overengineered, triply-redundant failsafeness.
:)
What you say may be true for some software at NASA (I have seen some of the flight software for MER, though it was kinematics stuff that didn't appear "overengineered" at all) however much of the software written here remains on the ground, and is used for things like planning and data analysis.
No fancy classes or object-orientedness. None of this fun stuff. Just raw, uninteresting, bulletproof code
The tool that I have worked on, Science Activity Planner for MER (which has a public version named Maestro, and will be open sourced later this year) is written in Java and is extremely object oriented in nature. It has all kinds of interesting data structures which are use dfor things like resource contraint simulation, and three dimensional geometry, etc... It's a browser based design and it showcases a unified concept of "content" to be displayed to and manipulated by the user.
My question is: how much would we learn from this?
Well, it contains new and interesting algorithms for on-the-fly image processing, along with plenty of great examples of data visualization. The graph-propagation driven simulation engine would seem to be of interest to all those with a bit of a CS bent... We also have a simple but effective example of a use for RDBMS persitence of java objects as a means of real-time collaboration and sychronization of aspects of planning.
Also tools like APGEN etc have *excellent* examples of things like Constraint Satisfaction Problem solvers in action... solving real life problems and interfacing with users, rather than simply being an accademic curiosity.
I also think people could learn a thing or two from some of MIPL's image processing algorithms... They are efficient and effective, and are built around a massively parallel dataflow "pipeline" system, one which is quite a useful paradigm for many kinds of business software.
Also, I think that in today's world of software engineering, a little more emphisis on making things "bulletproof" wouldn't hurt. Maybe going to the lengths NASA does is rediculous for most software, however even just adding a few tricks here and there could really improve the current state of programming.
Just remember that all NASA code is not necessarily flight code... some of the coolest stuff stays here on planet Earth
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Why don't tools like yum, up2date, and apt incorporate BitTorrent concepts to download packages and files?
This exists, it's called up2us. I've never tried it though.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Kill the mars program and fix the Hubble. We will go more places this way.
:)
Are you kidding? First of all, science is about a diversity of observations. Space based optical wavelength, small telescope astronomy is nice, however it provides only a tiny portion of the measurements needed to understand the universe. The observations that we are making on Mars could seal the case that life is probable to exist elsewhere in the universe, perhaps even nearby! The Hubble, currently, can do little in the way of the search for life or habitable planets. Secondly, the hubble is an ancient piece of technology. The money used to run the program is better spent on new, much more powerful types of observatories, for instance Gossamer Telescopes, next generation x-ray observatories, or the Terrestrial Planet Finder. For exploring the furthest reaches of the universe, you must use infrared telescopes like the James Webb Telescope due to the massive redshift. Also it is important to set up a method of making groundbreaking observations of gravitional waves using something like LISA is essential to furthering our understanding of general relativity and cosmology. Also planetary exploration helps us develop propulsion systems that will eventually be used to launch interstellar probes.
There's so much to explore, and we're never going to make progress by continuously dumping money into a dying technology... Hubble's service record has been amazing, especially considering its flaws, however it is time to move on, to discover new and different things that Hubble cannot see.
Eliminating planetary science in order to take more pretty pictures, IMHO, is unacceptable. I'm glad to see that NASA agrees with this.
Disclaimer: I work on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, so I'm a little biased
Cheers,
Justin Wick
At least then you wouldn't end up using the blanks for something you REALLY want extras of, like Fedora Core or Led Zeppelin.
:)
Wow I must be tired... When I first read that I thought Fedora Core was some great new band I'd never heard of..
hmm....
Justin
before anyone gets excited because of "Justin Wick"'s signature, realize he is not really a NASA scientist but a little intern guy.
:)
The above poster is correct. I state clearly in my Slashdot info that I am a university student. I have been working on MER since I was a freshman, and I have spent the last 3 years developing portions of the GDS software used by the scientists. (GDS = Ground Data Systems). I am one semester away from my degree in Applied Physics.
Yes, I am an intern, however I have been doing this long enough as to actually have some idea of what I am doing. When I post in a semioffical capacity, I try to stay within my realm of expertise, or synthesize information that was stated previously by someone who knows what they are talking about.
I'm merely trying to provide some "insider" views to slashdot. The big guys on the mission tend to have a few better things to do than post to slashdot, so I do
Cheers,
Justin
Wow, what can I say? I'm in building 264 here at JPL and it's way past our bed time, but that's not stopping everyone from enjoying the new images! The enthusiasm here is just incredible; I've never been so on the edge of my seat as I was as I waited for my script to automatically bring up the first image processed from Mars.
:)
Steve Squyres (the principle investigator) is quite excited about the position of the rover... It's insane how many geologically interesting features are nearby the rover, especially considering it was a safe landing site. To quote the press conference, "It's like trying to land in Oklahoma and hope to find the Grand Canyon." It's simply amazing the details we are seeing on even the most compressed of images!
Geologists are excited, engineers are excited... Even people that don't know anything about geology (like myself) realize how important it is to find outcroppings like this... allowing us to see the stratigraphy of the local site... looking back millions of years into the past, it's incredible! I personally hope that we RAT the outcroppings. We're already seeing some hints of layering there... hmm...
But most exciting of all is the chance, as Steve Squyres mentioned, that we could be inside a crater. That would be an incredibly awesome place to start... The chance to study craters up close will be invaluable to our future interpretation of cratered worlds.
Once again I cannot get accross how cool all of this is. Thanks so much to all of you out there who are interested in this stuff... even if it is just which OS the rover runs
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Just to let you know what sort of effect you guys have on the world.. I'm watching your guys right now on live web cast.. from Perth in Western Australia, and I gotta say.. I'm damned impressed with your accomplishments..
Well done guys and congrats..
Austrailia has been a wonderful friend to the US, and the Canberra installation has been invaluable to many space missions. Thanks for all your help from down under!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Good on ya', Justin, but isn't it a bit premature to be calling this a success?
Though there are challenges on mars each new day, every inch of ground we take, every meter of atmosphere we penetrate, every bit of data sent back is indeed a success of modern science, engineering, and planning. There can be no doubt about this. Many critics of the space program (not that I suggest that you are one of them) do not realize the tremendous number of things that must go precisely right for a mission to go well.
We have landed a working vehicle on mars, and have received communications from it. That alone is, without a doubt, worth celebrating.
Yes there are many more things that must still be done, and perhaps we will fail at one or more of those. But tonight we have succeeded, and that cannot be taken away from us.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Well, as a software engineer on MER, I must say that I and my collegues are all thrilled to see yet another success! NASA's Mars program has needed a success like this, and we are thrilled to get yet another chance to explore Mars.
I would like to thank all of the other engineers and scientists that have worked on this mission... many of which worked untold hours of unpaid overtime to do the things that the budgets couldn't afford (and that the mission couldn't live without).
I'd like to thank the leaders of our nation for giving us the resources to accomplish this feat, and their support politically.
But most importantly I'd like to thank the public for their interest, excitement, and moral/fiscal support. We're doing this for you and your children, that they might understand the universe better. Thanks for all of the fans out there!
Oh, and if you haven't already, now is a great time to grab Maestro, NASA's public science tool for visualizing mars data (which I helped to develop).
What a great night!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
(yes, I know it's more than an image browser; I don't mean to denigrate it; that's just what I use it for ;-)
Most of my work was with the downlink browser, so I don't care if you use any of Jeff's stuff. Okay so I did shared targets too (and that was a ton of work to get right as well).
Cheers,
Justin
Hey Scott,
:)
Since you went into a bit of detail about your work, I'll tell slashdot a little about RSVP's planning counterpart, Science Activity Planner.
Science Activity Planner is used by scientists for planning before the Science Operational Working Group meeting, in which the final plans are made on SAP.
Scientists can visualize doownlinked data products and create high-level plans which are then later converted to sequences by the sequencing team using RSVP and a few other tools (like MAPGEN).
RSVP is aimed towards the engineering aspects of seqwuencing, and has precise simulation, etc. SAP is aimed towards the scientific part of the process, that is designating high level targets, analysing data that's come down, and planning things in a somewhat rough level.
We also have a 3D visualization environment which isn't too bad (especially considering it's Java3D!) Our simulation is much rougher (but very fast) and is used to give scientists a good idea of what their plans will do, and leave the details to the sequencing team.
The public version of Science Activity Planner is known as Maestro and can be downloaded at Maestro Headquarters. It has essentially the same functionalities, however the data is significantly compressed, and of course the planning has had all the sensitive bits removed.
It's really amazing all the effort that goes into one day on mars, from examing the data to sending the final sequence. Too bad there's no public version of RSVP, otherwise everyone could see how awesome it is
Cheers,
Justin Wick,
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Is it true that spirit makes use of Java? Or does only the "client" software used to control it,use Java.
Much software ON THE GROUND at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is written in Java, but not software on the spacecraft.
I wrote some of the software used for the mission in Java, and it worked very well for our purposes, namely due to platform independence and quick development time. We had a heck of a time with some of the GUI code, however.
The rover runs VxWorks from Wind River. Very solid. Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Not to bring down the Spirit guys or their great work, but their talk of pioneering 30cm moves sound a bit dull compared with Lunokhod, or the Pathfinder.
Oh come on, you can't compare a an ancient real-time controlled rover like Lunokhod to an autonomous, self-navigating rover like Spirit. Spirit could easily run around all over the place if a human were driving it, that's not the challenge. The challenge is the navigation and safety aspects, and without a human controlling it one has to be very conservative.
Also remember that sunlight is much dimmer out on Mars than it is on the moon, adn the gravity is higher, thus speeds tend to be slower.
And as for pathfinder, the rover had almost no science instrumentation, and it got stuck.
I know comparing apples and oranges is a slashdot favorite, but please don't put down an engineering triumph because you don't understand the differences in mission parameters!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Wow... can't believe mods find my post +5 interesting... it's so easy to get modded up on slashdot when you're from NASA :)
:)
Hmm... maybe NASA faked my karma... tinfoil hat people, maybe you can explain?
Cheers,
Justin Wick
As a NASA worker, I'd like to congradulate the ESA on their success with Mars Express.
Welcome to Mars!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Although the site is "conserving bandwidth", and didn't have as much info as I would like available right this second,
There is a secondary site at http://mars0.sdsc.edu/ which has a lot more info.
Check it out. It even has a Wiki about Maestro and MER.
Many Maestro and MER related questions are also being answered in #maestro on irc.freenode.net.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner / Maestro Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers