Tonight
- Posted: 8/5/12
- Category: Miscellaneous Software
- Topics: Curiosity JPL Mars
Curiosity experiences its Seven Minutes of Terror tonight, or becomes loose parts scattered across Mars.
- 1:31AM (after midnight tonight) Eastern Daylight
- 12:31AM (after midnight tonight) Central Daylight
- 11:31PM Mountain Daylight
- 10:31PM Pacific Daylight
The software orchestrating this landing sequence is running on the operating system I teach, VxWorks.
Addendum
Well before Curiosity’s launch, I had the privilege of teaching some of the responsible engineers at JPL in Pasadena. They were hyper-focused on timing accuracy in the OS. I showed them the details of the implementation, and answered their questions to satisfaction.
Curiosity was subsequently placed on the surface of Mars in the most complex landing ever attempted.
I made a small contribution to that success.