<
https://thenewstack.io/papermoon-a-space-grade-linux-for-the-newspace-era/>
"TOKYO — When I worked for NASA in the 1980s, every satellite and spaceship
that went into orbit ran one-off, hand-coded, semi-proprietary programs. This
approach was painful, expensive, and sometimes disastrous, as with the loss of
the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 due to a software blunder.
Things have changed. In his “Space Grade Linux” keynote at the Open Source
Summit Japan conference, Ramón Roche, a longtime robotics developer and general
manager of the Dronecode Foundation, told how Linux and open source software
are becoming the default for every launch — replacing the bespoke, one-off
programs of the past.
This change has been coming for a while. By 2013, the International Space
Station (ISS) switched out its Windows laptops for Debian Linux machines for
mission-critical work. Today, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, Falcon 9, and its
Dragon spacecraft both run Linux. Roche also noted that the first aircraft on
another planet, the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, flew with Linux. Heck, a
developer recently managed to run open source Doomon, a European Space Agency
(ESA) satellite.
But Roche stressed that one thing has been lacking. A common space Linux
platform so that space companies can stop “competing on the plumbing” and start
sharing core software infrastructure."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
