NASA pulls off a 350-million mile software update. Mars ain’t nothing!

NASA doesn’t fear distance! Nor space! Those dreaming fools have updated Curiosity’s software. No big deal, it was only a 350-million mile jaunt from Earth to Mars. Just another day in the life of those space-wizards.

Boing Boing:

This week the team at NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory finished “what amounted to a complete overhaul of the Curiosity Rover’s software,” from 350 million miles away on another planet. Ben Cichy, Curiosity’s chief software engineer, explained to Wired Newsthat the software required to help Curiosity land on the surface of Mars and the software it needs to drive around and avoid obstacles are different. The system “didn’t have enough memory to hold the software for both the landing mission and the surface mission, so the software had to be swapped out remotely after landing.” The upgrade took four days, not unlike, say, Windows Server 8.