
NASA's New Horizons Completes Record-Setting Kuiper Belt Targeting Maneuvers - tluthra
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151105
======
TheSpiceIsLife
I hadn't read about this before. From Wikipeida: _The software of the probe
runs on Nucleus RTOS operating system. Nucleus RTOS is a real-time operating
system (RTOS) offered by the Embedded Software Division of Mentor Graphics for
various central processing unit (CPU) platforms. Nucleus RTOS is embedded
software and is in an estimated 2.11 billion devices worldwide. ... The
Nucleus RTOS is designed for deeply embedded systems applications including
consumer electronics, set-top boxes, cellular phones, and other portable and
handheld devices. For limited memory systems Nucleus RTOS can be scaled down
to a memory footprint as small as 13 KB for both code and data._

2.11 billion devices world wide, and 1 device beyond Pluto. The most wide
spread operating system developed by the humans of Earth.

~~~
idlewords
That means the average device running Nucleus RTOS is 3.5 kilometers from
Earth.

~~~
mikeash
And is rising at approximately 250 meters per year.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Have you accounted for the rise in quantity of terrestrial devices, or only
used the increasing distance of New Horizons to calculate the 250 meters?

~~~
mikeash
Good point, that didn't occur to me.

