Ask HN: Software and programming languages on the Mars Perseverance mission

20 points by peebz 5 years ago | 7 comments

What software and programming languages are being used for the various systems on the Perseverance mission to Mars? What are the design principles and mission constraints that have influenced the choices that have been made?

tectonic 5 years ago |

Check out NASA's Software Engineering Handbook: https://standards.nasa.gov/standard/nasa/nasa-hdbk-2203

whalesalad 5 years ago |

https://www.cio.com/article/3569577/the-technology-aboard-th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_compute...

ampdepolymerase 5 years ago |

Probably the usual aerospace stack: C/C++ and Ada doing the heavy lifting. Since memory is no longer a (significant) space constraint in 2021, I suspect other high level languages are also used for the non-critical parts of the system.

harveywi 5 years ago | |

> memory is no longer a (significant) space constraint

I see what you did there.

sul_tasto 5 years ago | | |

the universe is expanding, after all...

virgil_disgr4ce 5 years ago | |

> Since memory is no longer a (significant) space constraint in 2021

Is this definitely true in the context of astronautics?

bootloop 5 years ago | | |

The main computer of Perseverance (and Curiosity) has 256 megabytes of RAM. Which is only twice of what Spirit and Opportunity had so I wouldn't call this a significant increase. (Even Pathfinder had 128 in 1997 but wasn't a rover.)