ESA’s Mars spacecraft has received an update to Windows 98 to improve its performance to improve its mission capabilities. Check the details.
Yes, you read that correctly. A spacecraft orbiting Mars has finally received an update to Windows 98 to improve its performance. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Many of you who read this may even know about Windows 98. And that’s not a problem, given that this spacecraft was launched in 2003 and has been orbiting the red planet for almost 19 years. This is a long time and in the world of technology on planet Earth this craft will be considered obsolete. After all, how many computers still use Windows 98 or even Windows XP already?
The spacecraft, called Mars Express, was launched in 2003 by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its software was based on Microsoft’s Windows 98. The spacecraft carried equipment called Mars Advanced Radar for underground and ionospheric drilling (MARSIS). The equipment was key to the discovery of a huge underground aquifer with liquid water in 2018. ESA now wants to upgrade theocrat to work even better.
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Mars Express to get the Windows 98 update
MARSIS equipment essentially uses low-frequency radio waves to study the surface of Mars for water as well as its atmosphere. The spacecraft’s 130-foot antenna can search up to 3 miles below the planet’s surface. With the software update, the spacecraft should now be able to improve signal reception and data processing on board. This will improve the quality of the data sent to Earth.
“After decades of fruitful science and a good understanding of Mars, we wanted to go beyond the instrument beyond some of the limits required since the beginning of the mission,” said Andrea Chicketti, PI Deputy and MARSIS Operations Manager at INAF, who is leading the development. on the upgrade.
“We have faced a number of challenges to improve MARSIS performance,” said Carlo Nena, MARSIS’s on-board software engineer at Enginium, who is implementing the upgrade. “Not least because the MARSIS software was originally designed more than 20 years ago using a development environment based on Microsoft Windows 98!”
“Before, to study the most important features of Mars and study its Phobos moon in general, we relied on a sophisticated technique that stored a lot of high-resolution data and very quickly filled the instrument’s built-in memory,” says Andrea. “By discarding data we don’t need, the new software allows us to turn on MARSIS five times longer and explore a much larger area with each pass,” Andrea added.
With the new software, Mars Express will accelerate the exploration of these high-resolution regions and confirm whether they are sources of water on Mars. “It’s really like having a brand new instrument on board the Mars Express almost 20 years after launch,” added ESA Mars Express scientist Colin Wilson.
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