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The Mars Express probe is best known for detecting liquid water below the Martian surface. But now, nearly two decades after its launch, Mars Express is gaining notoriety among nerds thanks to a software update. In the words of astronaut Chris Hadfield, “How do you update Windows 98 on a spacecraft orbiting Mars?”
Space fans and computer geeks alike are excited to learn that Mars Express, which the European Space Agency (ESA) launched in 2003, runs software related to Windows 98. ESA has just updated this software to improve the spacecraft’s signal strength and ability to collect data, a preparatory step before Mars Express searches for water at the Red Planet’s south pole.
How is Windows 98 upgraded on a spacecraft orbiting Mars? @this he’s doing it for Mars Express, after 19 years. https://t.co/DRWtuaqo22 pic.twitter.com/xxkDz5GrL1
-Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) June 22, 2022
To be clear, Mars Express does not run Windows 98. An instrument on the probe, called MARRIS, uses software that was built in a Windows 98-based development environment. So Mars Express can probably run CONDEMNbut the ESA is exaggerating the truth a bit to put things in perspective: successfully updating this software was no easy task!
The functional changes provided by this update are interesting. According to Andrea Cicchetti, Deputy Principal Investigator for MARSIS, the original MARRIS software “relied on a complex technique” to collect high-resolution data. But this technique filled the instrument’s internal memory too quickly.
“By discarding data we don’t need,” explains Cicchetti, “the new software allows us to run MARSIS for five times longer and explore a much larger area with each pass.”
Mars Express launched in 2003 and is nearly two decades old. The fact that it’s still collecting useful data is surprising, and well, this software update could lead to a major discovery at the Martian south pole.
Source: ESA
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