Maintaining Mars Rover Operations Software On A Budget

This paper characterizes and discusses the software scripts and tools used by the Mars Science Laboratory rover planner team, and describes the effort to unify the management of this tool suite. Rover Planners have historically used numerous command line tools to aid them in designing and implementing activities over the course of a tactical planning shift. The bulk of these tools were developed ad-hoc by various individuals, with little oversight or organization. As a result, the scripts were poorly documented, difficult to locate, and mostly did not have any formal testing associated with them. As part of the modernization process, we identified all of the existing scripts and their source code locations, moved them to a centralized location within the operations venue, and wrote unit tests and integration tests for every tool. Many tools were upgraded from Python 2 to Python 3, or converted from other languages to Python 3 where feasible. We implemented a system for reviewing changes and continuous testing by moving all scripts to a single git repository, where we track and actively maintain them. Pull requests are tested automatically using Jenkins, and the entire suite of scripts and library functions is tested upon every deployment of the suite. We manage feature requests and bug fixes via GitHub issues, and a working group meets biweekly to discuss changes and progress on efforts relating to software-based tools for the MSL rover planners. In this paper, we detail the design of a unified system for managing these command line tools, the implementation of said system, and the innovation and utility of these tools and how they improve the tactical planning process for MSL Rover Planners. We present this framework as an example for other mission operations teams to use to manage standalone command line scripts that make use of common tools and services.