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How much software does it take to land a spacecraft safely on Mars, and how do you make all that code reliable? This column describes such a software development process. The first Web extra at is a 60-second video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that shows how NASA's Mars rover drivers operate the vehicles from millions of miles away. The second Web extra at is an animated video showing how NASA's Curiosity rover communicates with Earth via two of NASA's Mars orbiters, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Odyssey, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express. The third Web extra at is a video discussing the scientific study by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at Rocknest.
impact, spacecraft, software
Gerard J. Holzmann, "Landing a Spacecraft on Mars", IEEE Software, vol.30, no. 2, pp. 83-86, March-April 2013, doi:10.1109/MS.2013.32
1. JPL Coding Standard for Flight Software Written in the C Programming Language, Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Inst. of Technology, 2009; http://lars-lab.jpl.nasa.govjpl_coding_standard_c.pdf .
2. G.J. Holzmann, “Scrub: A Tool for Code Reviews,” Innovations in System and Software Eng., vol. 6, no. 4, 2010, pp. 311-318.
3. G.W. Russell, “Experience with Inspection in Ultralarge-Scale Developments,” IEEE Software, Jan. 1991, pp. 25-31.
4. G.J. Holzmann, “Static Source Code Checking for User-Defined Properties,” Proc. 6th World Conf. Integrated Design and Process Technology (IDPT 02), 2002; http://spinroot.comuno.
5. J.L. Lions, ARIANE 5: Flight 501 Failure, tech. report, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, 1996;
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