An overview of the Mars exploration rovers´ flight software

Author

Reeves, Glenn E. ; Snyder, Joseph F.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2005

fDate

10-12 Oct. 2005

Firstpage

1

Abstract

The Mars exploration rovers (MER) flight software (FSW) is possibly the most complex software implementation to be deployed on another planet. The requirements dictated a software system that addressed four distinct mission phases (cruise, landing, egress, and surface) and the mission demanded a system with significant autonomy. The structure of the MER flight software reflects its object-oriented beginnings and the overall function reflects the requirements of the MER mission and spacecraft. This paper provides an overview of the function and structure of the MER flight software. The MER mission and spacecraft are briefly discussed to provide context for the flight software decomposition and the discussion of the software execution model.

Keywords

Mars; aerospace computing; object-oriented programming; planetary rovers; space vehicles; MER spacecraft; Mars exploration rovers flight software; object-oriented software; software execution model; Aerospace engineering; Communication system control; Energy management; Engineering management; Laboratories; Mars; Planets; Propulsion; Software performance; Space vehicles; Mars; autonomy; flight; rovers; software;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2005 IEEE International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9298-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSMC.2005.1571113

Filename

1571113