Managing fixes for the latest versions of Windows may be a concern for most of us here on Earth, but in the meantime, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has received the first update to its Window 98-based system from 19 years.
The mission was launched for the first time to detect signs of liquid water on Mars, including an alleged 20x30km saltwater lake buried under 1.5km of ice in the South Pole region of the Red Planet.
The updates were performed by engineers from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Italy, and were fully funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
What does this mean?
The agency said the upgrade would allow the spacecraft to see Mars and its moon Phobos with better levels of detail.
Mars Express’s Mars Advanced Radar for underground and ionospheric drilling (MARSIS) sends low-frequency radio waves down to the planet using its 40-meter antenna.
Most of these waves are reflected from the planet’s surface, but significant amounts pass through the crust and affect the boundaries between the layers of various materials below the surface, including ice, soil, rock and water.
By studying the reflected signals, scientists can map the structure below the surface of Mars to a depth of several kilometers and study properties such as the thickness and composition of its polar ice caps and the properties of volcanic and sedimentary rock layers.
The space agency doesn’t go into much detail about the specifications of the hardware receiving the update, but Tom’s Hardware speculates that it may have a Pentium 90 processor, meaning it could potentially play classic games like Doom, as well as explore the secrets of Mars.
“Before, in order to study the most important features of Mars and study its Phobos moon in general, we relied on a sophisticated technique that stored a lot of high-resolution data and filled the instrument’s built-in memory very quickly,” said Andrea Chicketti, deputy chief. MARSIS researcher and operations manager at INAF.
He added: “By discarding data we don’t need, the new software allows us to turn on MARSIS five times longer and explore a much larger area with each pass.”
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