Case Study: NASA powers Mars rover Curiosity with Wind River VxWorks

NASA lands Curiosity on Mars in 7 minutes with Wind River

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, faced the immense challenge of developing and landing the Curiosity rover on Mars, a mission requiring a fail-proof, resilient real-time operating system to manage the most complex and risky autonomous robotic spacecraft ever launched. To power this mission-critical system, NASA turned to vendor Wind River and its VxWorks operating system.

Wind River implemented its VxWorks RTOS as the core software platform controlling all of Curiosity's functions, from avionics to data collection. The solution, developed with Wind River Workbench and supported by Wind River Professional Services, resulted in the successful launch and landing of the rover. This compressed development cycles by enabling code reuse from previous missions and lowered testing costs by reducing system complexity, contributing to the overall success of the $2.5 billion project.

NASA