Curiosity rover on Mars

Curiosity rover on Mars

[Peter C. Chapin]

The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars earlier this week. 
Congratulations to NASA and to all those who worked on the daring and 
controversial new landing system---which apparently worked perfectly. I 
saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000 lines of code in 
the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does anyone happen to know 
if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?

Peter

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:41:05 AM UTC-7, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars earlier this week. 
> Congratulations to NASA and to all those who worked on the daring and 
> controversial new landing system---which apparently worked perfectly. I 
> saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000 lines of code in 
> the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does anyone happen to know 
> if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?

According to

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in

it's in C, possibly "mostly auto-generated".

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Per Sandberg]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2012 11:31:11 -0700 (PDT)
"Jeffrey R. Carter" <ggsub@pragmada.co.cc> wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:41:05 AM UTC-7, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> > The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars earlier this week. 
> > Congratulations to NASA and to all those who worked on the daring
> > and controversial new landing system---which apparently worked
> > perfectly. I saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000
> > lines of code in the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does
> > anyone happen to know if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?
> 
> According to
> 
> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in
> 
> it's in C, possibly "mostly auto-generated".
I think it's fascinating that we talk about systems written in C when
the code is produced by pass-0 in tool-chain where the last
pass consists of of a call to a traditional compiler.

What would be interesting to know is in what language did the engineers
put their intellectual effort,

If the automated tool chain is:

 "C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
 "Ada -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
 "Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
 "simulink -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
 "simulink -> Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"

All the above scenarios are possible so in what language is the system
written in ??

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 9 Aug 2012 07:23:47 +0200, Per Sandberg wrote:

>  "simulink -> Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"

I heard that Simulink Realtime Workshop does not support Ada code
generation anymore.

> All the above scenarios are possible so in what language is the system
> written in ??

May I quote the epic Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal:

"For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program
that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary
object code directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its
equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working
programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original Fortran code. In
many cases, the original source code is no longer available."

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 8/9/2012 2:31 AM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Aug 2012 07:23:47 +0200, Per Sandberg wrote:
>
>>   "simulink -> Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>
> I heard that Simulink Realtime Workshop does not support Ada code
> generation anymore.
>

That is correct. Ada support was removed long time ago, few years now.

--Nasser

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:23:47 +0200, Per Sandberg  
<per.sandberg@sandat.dyndns.org> a écrit:
> If the automated tool chain is:
>
>  "C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>  "Ada -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>  "Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>  "simulink -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>  "simulink -> Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>
> All the above scenarios are possible so in what language is the system
> written in ??

Seems this was "MATLAB -> C -> …" and "Formal Modelling -> C -> …", which  
is not the same as C alone. But seems some part were written in C by hand,  
1/5 of the whole. The C compiler they used is probably highly trusted too,  
and even perhaps formally verified.

When high level techniques are used, the target language is not that  
important, except if the target is to be updated or tweaked by hand later  
(but that would probably brake the model, if formal techniques are not  
used).

Please, don't throw away that example to any one, most won't understand C  
as a target language and C as a main design language is not the same, and  
they would do biased comparison with Ada.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Peter C. Chapin]

On 2012-08-09 01:23, Per Sandberg wrote:

> If the automated tool chain is:
>
>   "C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>   "Ada -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>   "Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>   "simulink -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>   "simulink -> Ada -> C -> Assembly -> MachineCode"
>
> All the above scenarios are possible so in what language is the system
> written in ??

It's written in whatever language the humans used. The rest is just an 
artifact of translation.

Peter

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Charles H. Sampson]

Jeffrey R. Carter <ggsub@pragmada.co.cc> wrote:

> On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:41:05 AM UTC-7, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> > The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars earlier this week.
> > Congratulations to NASA and to all those who worked on the daring and
> > controversial new landing system---which apparently worked perfectly. I
> > saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000 lines of code in
> > the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does anyone happen to know
> > if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?
> 
> According to
> 
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-
curiosity-rovers-software-built-in
> 
> it's in C, possibly "mostly auto-generated".

     If you watch one of the 5-minute-long NASA animations of the
landing sequence on YouTube (search for "Seven Minutes of Terror"), a
screen goes by with the text "500,000 L1NES OF COD3".  I initially
though COD3 was some sort of special purpose language that NASA created
to fit the requirements of spaceflight.  Then I noticed the '1' in L1NES
and now I suspect that they were probably just being cutsy with the
text.  Does anyone know?

                        Charlie
-- 
Nobody in this country got rich on his own.  You built a factory--good.
But you moved your goods on roads we all paid for.  You hired workers we
all paid to educate. So keep a big hunk of the money from your factory.
But take a hunk and pay it forward.  Elizabeth Warren (paraphrased)

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Stephen Leake]

"Jeffrey R. Carter" <ggsub@pragmada.co.cc> writes:

> On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:41:05 AM UTC-7, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
>> The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars earlier this week. 
>> Congratulations to NASA and to all those who worked on the daring and 
>> controversial new landing system---which apparently worked perfectly. I 
>> saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000 lines of code in 
>> the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does anyone happen to know 
>> if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?
>
> According to
>
> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in
>
> it's in C, possibly "mostly auto-generated".

Which means it's not in C, it's in some graphical language.

If you use a compilation system for Ada that happens to use C as an
intermediate language, would you say your application is "written in C,
mostly auto-generated"?

Why is a graphical language that uses C as an intermediate any
different?

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Jeffrey Carter]

On 08/30/2012 04:27 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> "Jeffrey R. Carter" <ggsub@pragmada.co.cc> writes:
>
>> it's in C, possibly "mostly auto-generated".
>
> Which means it's not in C, it's in some graphical language.
>
> If you use a compilation system for Ada that happens to use C as an
> intermediate language, would you say your application is "written in C,
> mostly auto-generated"?

The key word here is "possibly". If it's not mostly auto-generated, then it's in C.

If it is mostly auto-generated, I'd like to know what it was actually written in.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"I've got to stay here, but there's no reason
why you folks shouldn't go out into the lobby
until this thing blows over."
Horse Feathers
50

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to news@netfront.net ---

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[johnscpg]

> 
> The key word here is "possibly". If it's not mostly auto-generated, then it's in C.
> 
> If it is mostly auto-generated, I'd like to know what it was actually written in.
> 
> Jeff Carter
> 

The file  havelund.pdf  is relevant, (but doesn't answer
the question).  The address is:

http://compass.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ws-slides

J.

Re: Curiosity rover on Mars

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 8/8/2012 9:41 AM, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
>I
> saw a NASA video that mentioned that there was 500,000 lines of code in
> the EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing) system. Does anyone happen to know
> if there is any Ada on board that spacecraft?
>


fyi:

according to this

http://thecodist.com/article/bad_software_worse_solutions_programming_will_always_be_hard

"The Mars Lander is millions of lines of C written for exactly one use"

--Nasser