[X] My Assistant

[Tom O'Reilly]

How flexible is the MSL embedded software? Could it be modified "in situ" to accommodate teleoperation by humans in Mars orbit?

In my current line of work I work with underwater vehicles of various kinds. An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is a free-swimming robot with no physical connection to the surface. Since radio waves do not propagate through seawater and since acoustic communications are generally very slow, "real-time" human control of the AUV is not practical. Instead the AUV onboard software is designed for autonomous untended operation. MSL seems analogous to an AUV; the long Earth-Mars light-time eliminates the possibility of "fast" human response. So I presume that MSL onboard software is similar in its design to AUV software.

I also work with Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) which are connected to a surface vessel via electro-optical tether. The ROV is operated by human pilots on the surface vessel, who use joy-sticks and other UIs to "fly" the vehicle and control its instruments in real-time. The vehicle software is designed specifically to accommodate the human-in-the-loop control; these control loops operate at millisecond intervals. ROV software design is quite different from AUV software design.

Let's be wildly optimistic and suppose that there is a human expedition to Martian orbit in the next twenty years, but no human landing yet. The orbital mission could bring its own tele-operated surface robots, but I wonder if they could also use MSL if it is still operational. Would it be possible to re-program MSL in situ to accommodate real-time teleoperation by astronauts in Mars orbit?

[djellison]

MSL has many things. Awesome cameras. A frickin laser beam. A sense of terror and awe, frankly. One thing it does NOT have is an abudance of power. Floodlights and night time operations have been mentioned by the interested public, but only because they see the RTG and think 'unlimited power'. It's not. It still has a power budget It still has to stop and recharge batteries. A year or so ago there was a story suggesting that auxiliary solar arrays might be added to MSL, such was the power budget. MAHLI is qualified to work at night (it's White and UV led's would probably make night time imaging the best type of imaging.)

With MRO and MODY - there's no opportunity for mid-day downlink of enough data to plan another drive.