Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover?

Curiosity has 2GB of onboard radiation-hardened Flash storage - not enough to fit both the Flight software and the Rover software at the same time. So they devised a system where they would fly the rover to Mars with the Flight software, and considering they wouldn't be performing a return trip, decided that they could remote-wipe the flight data and install rover software in its place.

Due to Curiosity's nature, the onboard electronic systems need to be radiation-hardened. Not jjust "tin-foil cover" hardened. I'm talking engineered from the ground-up to resist data corruption from external radiation sources. This comes at extreme cost, both financially and physically. Every little bit of extra RAM or Flash storage adds weight to the rover unit, and by extent, tons (literally) of extra fuel to carry it that full 225,000,000km. It's not as easy as plugging in a thumb drive or popping an extra disk in there. If it really were, do you think the rocket scientists at NASA would have thought about that before they shot a billion-dollar robot into the sky?

I know you think you're being all geeky and clever, but seriously. If you aspire to second-guess every engineering decision that NASA makes, perhaps you should apply for a management position there.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/_q6fvAMXJrY/could-you-hack-into-mars-curiosity-rover

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