NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Relies on Coverity to Ensure the Seamless Touchdown and Operation of the Curiosity Mars Rover
NASA JPL uses Coverity to test 2 million lines of mission critical flight software for defects; contributes to NASA's quest to uncover whether Mars could have ever hosted life.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Coverity, Inc., the development testing leader, today announced that the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), builder of the Curiosity Rover, used Coverity to help ensure the reliability of the mission-critical flight software guiding the successful landing of Curiosity on Mars.
From the inception of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory mission, static analysis has been used by NASA JPL as a key part of the code review process to ensure the success of one of the most complex missions ever undertaken by NASA and the reliability of one of the most complex machines ever sent into space.
NASA JPL developers use Coverity to test all of the software that controls the flight and onboard functions of the Curiosity Rover, over two million lines of code, to ensure that every software defect is found and fixed before launch. Curiosity is a car-sized land rover tasked with investigating whether Mars could have ever had environments conducive to life. Given the mission-critical nature of Curiosity, the software powering the rover must be reliable and free of software defects. A single defect could mean the difference between success and failure of the $2.5 billion NASA mission and impair its ability to assess the possibility of life on Mars.
"The use of Coverity technology in mission-critical projects with zero tolerance for error is a testament to our unique ability to quickly detect unpredictable and traditionally hard to spot software defects," said Jennifer Johnson, VP of Marketing at Coverity. "We are honored to have been able to contribute to this significant scientific achievement and help NASA unlock the secrets of potential life on Mars."
Coverity® Static Analysis is an industry leading development testing solution that leverages sophisticated analysis techniques for finding and eliminating hard-to-spot code defects early in the software development lifecycle, as the code is being written, when they are the easiest and least expensive to find and fix.
Online Resources
- Watch a video message about the Curiosity Rover
- Learn more about Development Testing
- Read the Coverity blog
About Coverity
Coverity, Inc., (www.coverity.com), the leader in development testing, is the trusted standard for companies that need to protect their brands and bottom lines from software failures. More than 1,100 Coverity customers use Coverity's development testing suite of products to automatically test source code for software defects that could lead to product crashes, unexpected behavior, security breaches, or catastrophic failure. Coverity is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco. Coverity is funded by Foundation Capital and Benchmark Capital. Follow us on Twitter or check out our blog.
SOURCE Coverity, Inc.
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