Product category:
Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: Wind River Systems | Subject: VxWorks
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 July 2007
RTOS to take charge of Martian mission
The Rad6000 computer onboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft will run on VxWorks.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft is scheduled to be launched from Florida on 3rd August 2007, with the intention of landing on a Martian arctic plain early in 2008 A collection of instruments, including a robotic arm and soil-sampling facilities will be onboard, powered by the Rad6000 onboard computer - running Wind River VxWorks
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Oct 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Like the other Rad6000 systems used on previous Mars exploration projects, there is only one main, general-purpose computer onboard the Phoenix.
Its jobs include controlling the execution of trajectory correction manoeuvres calculated by navigators during cruise phase and controlling EDL (entry, descent and landing) manoeuvres.
Phoenix is the first mission of NASA's Mars Scout Programme of competitively proposed, relatively low-cost missions to Mars.
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Selected in 2003, Phoenix saves expense by using a lander structure and other components originally built for a 2001 mission that was cancelled while in development.
VxWorks allows standardisation across projects, revisions and organisations - reducing tool investment, capital cost and training time.
VxWorks provides a highly integrated, feature-rich technology platform with a heritage of successful deployment by JPL in both on-planet and deep-space robotic experiments.
This deployment builds on a successful track record of eight successful Mars and deep-space missions with Wind River onboard, including the Mars Rover and Stardust missions.
"If you wanted to look at the craft as a body, and the various science stations as senses, the Rad6000 running VxWorks would be the brain", comments Mike Deliman, Wind River's Engineering Specialist for the Phoenix project.
He continues: "The Wind River team assisted them with their applications as needed, but JPL researchers and other Phoenix team members created nearly all of their applications themselves".
"We leave those tasks to the experts".
Phoenix will use a robotic digging arm and other instruments to determine whether the soil environment just beneath the surface could have been a favourable habitat for microbial life.
Studies from orbit suggest that within arm's reach of the surface, the soil holds frozen water.
Other Instruments controlled by the Rad6000 onboard computer include: the robotic arm, built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the MECA microscopy, electrochemistry and conductivity analyser, also built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the robotic arm camera, built by the University of Arizona and Max Planck Institute, Germany; the surface stereo imager, built by the University of Arizona; the TEGA thermal and evolved gas analyser, built by the University of Arizona and University of Texas, Dallas; the MARDI Mars descent imager, built by Malin Space Science Systems; and a meteorological station built by the Canadian Space Agency.
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