The European Space Agency (ESA) is updating the software in a critical part of the Mars Express spacecraft for the first time since it was deployed on the Red Planet in 2003.
ESA says (Opens in new window) Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) “is receiving a major software update that will allow it to see under the surfaces of Mars and its moon Phobos in more detail than ever before. ” And that’s no small feat.
“We faced a number of challenges to improve the performance of MARSIS,” Carlo Nenna of Enginium said in a statement. “No less important because MARSIS software was originally designed over 20 years ago, using a Microsoft Windows 98-based development environment!”
But Enginium and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, which operates MARSIS, overcame these challenges. ESA says it is now implementing the updated MARSIS software on Mars Express to help it look for signs of liquid water in the depths of the planet’s surface.
“The new software will help us study these regions more quickly and extensively in high resolution and confirm whether they are home to new water sources on Mars,” ESA Mars Express scientist Colin Wilson said in a statement. . “It’s really like having a new instrument aboard Mars Express almost 20 years after launch.”
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All of this means that the new software is being deployed on a nearly 20-year-old instrument, which was originally developed in Windows 98, on a planet that is typically about 140 million miles away. Please note this the next time you are prompted to install an update for your device.
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