Hasta La Gadget!

Think it’s nifty when your carrier deigns to provide your smartphone with that long awaited OTA update? That’s nothing. Over the weekend, NASA’s Curiosity rover will be receiving its first long-distance OTA update — all the way out there on Mars. The goal is to transition both redundant main computers from software suited for landing the vehicle to software optimized for surface exploration — such as driving, obstacle avoidance and using the robotic arm. NASA calls it a “brain transplant” and points out that the software was actually uploaded during the flight from Earth. Now can someone please enable OTA downloads for the human brain? We’d really like to know kung fu. PR after the break.

Continue reading NASA’s Curiosity rover receives long-distance OTA update, ‘brain transplant’ on Mars

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NASA’s Curiosity rover receives long-distance OTA update, ‘brain transplant’ on Mars originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Aug 2012 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Curiosity Rover’s landing on Mars was a successful one, and it is time to get down and dirty on the Red Planet. In fact, Curiosity has certainly lived up to its name by sending back another photo on Thursday – this time around, it outdoes the previous photo sent, as this is the first 360-degree color panorama snapshot of the Gale Crater in the world, or should I say, galaxy, barring any other forms of intelligent life outside the sphere of earth of course. What you see above was provided by the folks over at NASA themselves, and scientists are taken in by the majestic vista of red dust, dark sand dunes and tan-hued rocks.

Far away in the distance, you can see the base of Mount Sharp, which is a three-mile-high mountain that rises from the crater floor, and it is one of the many destinations that the six-wheel Curiosity Rover intends to traverse. Curiosity’s mission timeframe would be two years, where it will analyze rocks and soil to look for the potential chemical building blocks that are required to kick start life.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NASA’s Mars rover: Curiosity almost complete, No 3D Rover camera from NASA,

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