Curiosity Rover On Standby As NASA Addresses Computer Glitch

Check out the official rover press kit for a summary of the computer design (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSLLanding.pdf) Page 42 in particular:

"Curiosity has redundant main computers, or rover compute elements. Of this ?A? and ?B? pair, it uses one at a time, with the spare held in cold backup. Thus, at a
given time, the rover is operating from either its ?A? side or its ?B? side. Most rover devices can be controlled by either side; a few components, such as the navigation camera, have side-specific redundancy themselves. The computer inside the rover ? whichever side is active ? also serves as the main computer for the rest of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during the flight from Earth and arrival at Mars. In case the active computer resets for any reason during the critical minutes of entry, descent and landing, a software feature called ?second chance? has been designed to enable the other side to promptly take control, and in most cases, finish the landing with a bare-bones version of entry, descent and landing instructions.

Each rover compute element contains a radiation-hardened central processor with PowerPC 750 architecture: a BAE RAD 750. This processor operates at up to 200 megahertz speed, compared with 20 megahertz speed of the single RAD6000 central processor in each of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Each of Curiosity?s redundant computers has 2 gigabytes of flash memory (about eight times as much as Spirit or Opportunity), 256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory and 256 kilobytes of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory.

The Mars Science Laboratory flight software monitors the status and health of the spacecraft during all phases of the mission, checks for the presence of commands to execute, performs communication functions and controls spacecraft activities. The spacecraft was launched with software adequate to serve for the landing and for operations on the surface of Mars, as well as during the flight from Earth to Mars. The months after launch were used, as planned, to develop and test improved flight software versions. One upgraded version was sent to the spacecraft in May 2012 and installed onto its computers in May and June. This version includes improvements for entry, descent and landing. Another was sent to the spacecraft in June and will be installed on the rover?s computers a few days after landing, with improvements for driving the rover and using its robotic arm."

And according to a release they issued after landing, both computers receive the same updates and are running the same software (not a version or 2 behind like others have suggested): http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1305 [nasa.gov]

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/oCKYHHo1PXw/story01.htm

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