As the first images [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/] of the Mars Curiosity lander start pouring in, let's talk about what operating system it runs. As I found out via Hacker News [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344277], the project runs on VxWorks [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks], a very popular embedded operating system used for truly mission critical tasks. I'd love to know just how much work has gone into making it bug-free - this isn't the kind of environment where you want code to fail.

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