<
https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-infinity-and-beyond-linux-and-open-source-goes-to-mars/>
"Perseverance hit Mars' atmosphere at almost 12,000 miles per hour (19,312
kilometers per hour) and a mere seven minutes later NASA landed its latest Mars
rover softly and safely. Onboard the one-ton mobile science lab is its tiny
flying companion, the drone helicopter Ingenuity. If all goes well, the
four-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity will be the first vehicle to ever fly on
another world. At 11-light minutes from Earth, no one will fly the
dual-propped Ingenuity with a drone controller. Instead, it will fly itself
using a combination of Linux and a NASA-built program based on the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) open-source F´ (pronounced F prime) framework.
This will be no easy task. No one has ever tried to fly on Mars, which has an
atmosphere only one-hundredth of the density of Earth's air. True, Mars also
has only a third of Earth's gravity, but still, Ingenuity's engineers will be
pleased as punch just to get Ingenuity off the ground.
Indeed, Ingenuity is purely a technology demonstration. It's not designed to
support the Perseverance mission, which is searching for signs of ancient life
and collecting rock and dirt samples for later missions to return to Earth. Its
mission is to show that it's possible to fly on Mars using commercial
off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and open-source software."
Via Steven Vaughan-Nichols.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
