Mars Rovers to Take Advantage of Cloud Computing | NASA Spirit & Opportunity Rovers, Internet-Based Services | Tech News Daily
An artist's impression of a Mars Exploration Rover on the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University
The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have now become the first NASA space mission to use "cloud computing" for daily mission operations.
The images snapped by cameras on the twin rovers (though only Opportunity is active at the moment) and beamed back to Earth from millions of miles away will now be stored on servers operated by Amazon, for example.
Rover team members will access this data to create daily mission plans, such as setting courses for objects of interest and commands to take certain pictures, and to perform scientific research.
The move to cloud computing will save money and server space at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which manages the Mars Exploration Rover project. It will also make accessing mission-critical data easier for team members around the world.
"When we need more computing capacity, we don't need to install more servers if we can rent more capacity from the cloud for just the time we need it," said John Callas, rover project manager at JPL. "This way we don't waste electricity and air conditioning with servers idling waiting to be used, and we don't have to worry about hardware maintenance and operating system obsolescence."
Up in the clouds
Many of us use cloud computing every day when we check our email or post photos on social media sites such as Facebook, for example. Instead of doing processing or storage work right on the computer (or smartphone) under our fingertips, we use services enabled by the Internet.
Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for what were planned as three-month missions, but the robust rovers have continued for more than six years.
Opportunity is currently active, requiring daily activity plans by a team of engineers at JPL, and scientists at many locations in North America and Europe. Spirit has been silent since March 2010 and is believed to be in a low-power hibernation mode for the Martian winter.
"The rover project is well suited for cloud computing," said Khawaja Shams, a JPL software engineer supporting the project. "It has a widespread user community acting collaboratively. Cloud enables us to deliver the data to each user from nearby locations for faster reaction time."
Also, the unexpected longevity of the mission means the volume of data used has outgrown the systems originally planned for handling and sharing data, which makes the virtually limitless capacity of cloud computing attractive.
Gearing up the next rover
The extended missions of Spirit and Opportunity have also provided a resource for testing innovations during an active space mission for possible use in future missions.
New software uploads giving the rovers added autonomy have been one example, and cloud computing is another.
JPL is currently building and testing NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, for launch in late 2011 in the Mars Science Laboratory mission. This rover will land on Mars in August 2012.
"The experience we gain using cloud computing for planning Opportunity's activities may be valuable when Curiosity reaches Mars, too," Shams said.
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