Friday, January 13, 2006

NewsForge | NASA's Mars rovers blaze path for open source in space

"The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, controlled by ground systems that were among NASA's heaviest use of open source to date when launched in 2003, are still working on the Red Planet, long after their mission was slated to end.

After working nearly two years and traveling more than four kilometers -- compared to a scheduled mission of only three months and 600 meters -- the rovers have continued to extend beyond the space agency's original aspirations for them. The rovers' tracks are also a testament to open source, laying the groundwork for even more open source use in the US space agency's next generation of Martian movers, Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior computer scientist Jeff Norris told NewsForge."

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