Quote:
Originally Posted by glend
Thanks Gary for that link story. They seem to be pretty far along in system testing now. I guess with all the experience and accumulated knowledge on getting rovers down to the surface and operating for long periods of time, they have it worked out well. Each rover seems to evolve out of the code for the one before.
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Thanks Glen,
What is also tricky is that the compute hardware they run on is very
modest in performance compared to the average desktop computer,
but it has been evolving as well.
For example, the Mars 2020 rover is equipped with a 200MHz Power PC
which is 10 times the speed of the CPU's in Spirit and Opportunity's computers.
Mars 2020's 2GB of FLASH is eight times that of Spirit or Opportunity.
Mars 2020's computer has only 256MB of DRAM.
Years ago, my former boss, who was a world leading expert in
semiconductor materials, told me an anecdote of when he was once
chairing a NATO technical briefing.
A
Soviet pilot had just defected and landed his MiG-25 Foxbat in Japan.
The West was eager to forensically examine its technology to gain
some appraisal as to Soviet capabilities.
When my former boss briefed the audience with the finding that
the MiG-25 had vacuum tube valves in its electronics, he said the audience laughed.
... until he pointed out that the valves meant that it was highly radiation
hardened, giving the ability for the aircraft to potentially keep flying
through heavy radioactive fallout.
He said there was then a stunned considered silence.
For the same reason satellites and spacecraft typically have modest
performance computing hardware but they are fabricated to be
radiation-hardened.
Mars 2020 Rover CPU specs :-
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/rover/brains/