* Software upgrade will reorient vehicle for maneuvering on
surface
* Installation of new computer applications will take four
days
* Six-wheeled craft contains less on-board memory than a
cell phone
PASADENA, Calif., Aug 10 (Reuters) - After flying more than
350 million miles (563 million km) from Earth, the Mars rover
Curiosity is about to get its driver's license.
Mission control engineers in California will spend the next
four days remotely installing new computer software in Curiosity
that essentially reorients the brains of the six-wheeled vehicle
for maneuvering around the surface of the Red Planet.
The nuclear-powered rover, about the size of a small sports
car, can only store so much pre-programmed information in its
computer module at once, having less on-board memory capacity
than a typical cell phone.
Its previous flight-control software was tailored for the
complex tasks of atmospheric entry, descent and landing that
brought the mobile science lab to a historic touchdown on the
floor of a vast, ancient impact basin called Gale Crater earlier
this week.
A new version of the software, uploaded to Curiosity while
it was still en route to Mars, is instead specially designed to
let NASA engineers safely drive the rover, operate its robot
arm, use its power drill, collect samples, sweep away dust and
perform other functions as it goes about its science mission.
"Curiosity was born to drive. This software includes the
capability for Curiosity to really go out and stretch her
wheels," Benjamin Cichy, the rover's senior software and systems
engineer, told reporters on Friday at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory near Los Angeles.
The new software package will be installed on Curiosity's
main computer and its backup.
All other activities will be suspended for the most part
during the upgrade, which was set to begin Friday night,
California time, at the start of Curiosity's fifth full day on
Mars. Instrument checks, picture-taking and science operations
are scheduled to resume on Day 9 of the mission.
Curiosity arrived on Mars Sunday night on a quest for
evidence that the planet most similar to Earth may once have
harbored the basic ingredients necessary for the evolution of
microbial life, or may even now be capable of supporting life.
The $2.5 billion project, formally named the Mars Science
Laboratory, is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the
Viking probes of the 1970s and is touted as the first
full-fledged mobile biochemistry lab ever sent to a distant
world.
The rover comes equipped with an array of sophisticated
instruments capable of analyzing samples of soil, rocks and
atmosphere on the spot and beaming results back to Earth.
The principal target of its exploration is a 3-mile-
(5-kilometer) high tower of layered rock, named Mount Sharp,
which is believed to have formed from sediment that once filled
Gale Crater. The mound, which stands a short distance from
Curiosity's landing site near the center of the crater, is seen
by Mars scientists as a potential gold mine of geologic study.
An initial review of data collected from Curiosity's arrival
on Mars revealed that it blasted through the planet's thin
atmosphere at 24 times the speed of sound, pulling the
equivalent of 11 times the force of Earth's gravity.
"If you were a human riding on board, it'd be a little bit
of a rough ride, but fortunately Curiosity is made of some tough
stuff," said Gavin Mendeck, who oversaw the rover's entry. It
landed just 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the center of its projected
landing zone.
The rover's chief engineer, Rob Manning, came closest to
predicting the exact spot where Curiosity ended up touching
down. He also oversaw some of the team's readiness testing.
"We think he might have rigged the system," descent and
landing operations lead Allen Chen joked during Friday's news
briefing.
(Additional reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by xxxxx)