Comments on: On Mars, no life yet, but many blue screens of death

Evidence from busy rovers suggests one-time presence of water, but system reboots almost dried up the sea of data.

[royc]

DOS?

Do they mean Micro$oft is running around on Mars?
Well, at least it's not Windows XP. ;)

I wonder how the hackers can get in to it?
They will try. :(

[smook]

maybe we need the help of hackers...

Possibly we should consult with the hackers to see if we can update the existing operating system and patch things up. A good virus should help. HAHA. BTW Don't the batteries re-charge?

[finleyd]

Not DOS - VxWorks

The rovers are not using MS-DOS. they are running VxWorks by Wind River Systems. VxWorks is a Real-Time OS based on UNIX.

For more, check out:

- the Wikipedia article on the Rovers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover), which include a discussion of the Hardware and Software used.

- Wind River's Website:

http://www.windriver.com

[TimeBomb]

Very informed comment

Because what--another Microsoft platform is BETTER? What, Win2K? Don't make me laugh.

Sorry, No Blue Screens On Mars

Catchy title, but no Blue Screens for the Rovers. From all indications, the Rovers operate using Java programs running on a Linux platform. The Flash Memory cards are preformatted with the FAT (DOS) file system, which can be used under Linux (in a single user mode). See: http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2003/03_106AR.html

vxWorks not Linux

the rovers are running vxWorks which has
support for the DOS file system.
So the catchy title was just BS.

[TimeBomb]

Yeah, but...

It just wouldn't be the same if they goofed on Linux rather than Microsoft, no matter what the basis in reality.

[David Arbogast]

Bad Strategy

Michael Kanellos is trolling with his titles...
A sad exploitation of emotional and vocal zealots.

[g8crapachino]

Michael Kanellos is Irresponsible.

Just because it uses the FAT file system does not mean it's running DOS.

It is also NOT running Windows or any form of it so why bring up Blue Screens?...

Post any article related to Microsoft and they known people will read the article. The author is just trying to draw readers by falsly implying that Microsoft has something to do with the Mar rovers. Thats just irresponsible news reporting.

Article is patently misleading.

First off, both rovers run off of the Wind River VxWorks OS - DOS has nothing to do with the flight software or operating system. Second off, the mentioned Spirit anomaly happened on Sol 18 - Spirit is currently on Sol 229 (meaning this happened ~7 months ago). This is the epitome of old news, and was also resolved long ago. There is absolutely no new information here that you couldn'tve gotten from marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov months ago, and is a shameful piece of misleading, badly researched, and behind-the-times journalism.

[dwhite25]

blue screen of death on Mars

You're not going to tell me that Windows fell over 'coz
hackers did it 'on mars'!!!!!

[dwhite25]

you would drag screens to mars with no one to look at them!

No one trying to pare down the weight of a Mars rover
would think for even a heatbeat wether to dump a screen

[201212211111]

Meteor vs meteorite

Is it too nit-picky to state that meteors become meteorites upon impact?