Hacker News: MutexMaven

New comment by MutexMaven in "How JPL keeps the 13-year-old Curiosity rover doing science"

MutexMaven — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 02:01:38 +0000

Anyone who wants a more in depth look at how patches keep getting applied to what's essentially a radhard version of the candy shell Mac processors can head over to this link -> https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/media/documents/Curiosity_...

Leveraging VxWorks you effectively have 3 different ways this software gets updated.

Hot Patch -> Do it live! where you modify the RAM with compiled code so that the changes persist until next reboot.

Cold Patch -> Same as a hot patch, except this time you actually copy the contents into non-volatile memory. VxWorks has a really slim profile and thus this helps keep the size manageable to continue doing science experiments.

Full Updated -> Basically a clean install gets burned in.

New comment by MutexMaven in "NASA's X-59 Aircraft Flies Supersonic for First Time"

MutexMaven — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:48:15 +0000

The X-59 isn't just a research aircraft. It's a blueprint for the future of supersonic commercial travel.

The Cockpit XVS display is powered by VxWorks and provides a cool HMI to the pilot that's configurable. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220006188/downloads/XV...

New comment by MutexMaven in "Artemis II fault tolerance"

MutexMaven — Sat, 02 May 2026 00:53:21 +0000

The engineering behind Artemis and SLS is a masterclass in safety-critical design. The quad redundant Primary runs on on a quadruple config PPC-750 CPU with the Green Hills Integrity OS and ARINC653 framework While the Back up is on a LEON 3 (SPARKV8) CPU using the VxWorks and NASA's CFS framework. (https://github.com/nasa/cFS)

NASA actually makes all this publicly available information available on their NTRS server.

Primary and BFS Info: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190000011/downloads/20... Orion BFS: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230002185/downloads/FS...

New comment by MutexMaven in "How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer"

MutexMaven — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:12:54 +0000

Wrong link, but still relevant. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140009920/downloads/20...

New comment by MutexMaven in "How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer"

MutexMaven — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:58:38 +0000

Yes, they leveraged Intel Simics and many other tools like Matlab etc. to have "Digital Twin" simulations.

The extensive use of simulators and emulators has been particularly critical, enabling parallel design and development workflows to compensate for the incredibly expensive and long-lead times of hardware. So this helped with bottlenecks in development too.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190000011/downloads/20...

New comment by MutexMaven in "How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer"

MutexMaven — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:53:22 +0000

NASA actually publishes these things on their NTRS page. The Primary flight controller is rocking Green Hills INTEGRITY RTOS on BAE RAD750s in a quad redundant config, with a VxWorks backup on a Frontgrade Gaisler LEON4 (SPARC V8). This allowed for parts of the ARINC653 spec regarding time and space partitioning of the RTOS scheduler to be used.

You can read more about it below (when the server throwing errors). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190000011/downloads/20... https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230002185/downloads/FS...