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Tux in Space
Anonymous Coward writes "In between all the bad news about Linux it's nice to see some good like this story about Linux getting used by NASA for satellite control I saw on NewsForge. It is on Linux Today too. This is not some garage dream but a real NASA project run by a real rocket scientist. Does ThinkGeek sell 'Tux in Space' T shirts yet? I want one!" NASA has a page for FlightLinux.
Thus is Microsoft's greatest chance for increasing NT's uptime lost. Given that the typical spacecraft sees sixteen sunrises every 24 hours, MS would have been quite justified in saying that NT was able to stay up for a hundred days without bluescreening.
And if this OS is for use on spacecraft, shouldn't it be called floatlinux? I'll concede that FreeFallLinux probably wouldn't go over too well.
I don't want to spoil all the fun but I can't help but laugh when I see someone noticing a story about how Linux is used in some space related case and immediately everyone is talking about how Microsoft is going to die and how this is a sign of how superrior open source is.
Guys.. There have been laptops on just about every shuttle flight so far, for use in various tasks. The laptops have usually been IBM thinkpads and the OS has usually been NT. The fact that someone is using Linux is nice, but it doesn't prove shit - one way or the other. All the other thousands of satellites in space use something else, you know...
It's the same when ONE city in ONE country (Mexico) decides to install Linux on both of their computers and it deserves a news here and a discussion with several hundreds of enthusiastic posts about world domination. Meanwhile, I'm sure Microsoft had hundreds of installations of Windows 9x / NT / 2k elsewhere in the world.
Now I have nothing against Linux - I develop software for it at work as a matter of fact - but I'd like to see some realism and balance in the news here. I don't know about the rest of you but I'd like to read "news for nerds, stuff that matters" - not just braindead pro Linux propaganda that isn't anchored in reality.
let me answer a few question...
PAZware "Dont they usaly write an independant os for satilites and telescopes and such?"
no, normally Sattelites use Propritary, COTS Embedded system like VxWorks
mindstrm "To claim it's 'more able to deal with the harsh radiation of space becasue it runs cooler because its halts the processor for brief times' is rediculous."
we never said that, we have not done any testing but because of the cooling APM features in the kernel it might be better. The problem is, in space heat does not radiate away from components. in order for heat to radiate, it must have air to radiate with, no air and you need to design a cooling system to keep the CPU from overheating. (like when you overclock, and the air circulation is not enough to keep the CPU cool, guess what, we have the same problem, we're not overclocking, but there is no circulation, so we need to find other ways to keep systems cool. the APM Idle functions in only one little but that might help reduce the need and expense for other cooling.
I_redwolf "Linux has been into space before this. Specifically in 96-97"
yes, Debian has been known to fly on a laptop on the shuttle, BUT a Linux system has never been in control of crucial systems, like that of Command and Control, that is one of our goals
papskier "Now we've got astronauts' lives dependent on linux."
if we weren't currently working on flying unmanned sattelite missions. currently not yet, there are no manned missions using Linux in crucial areas. but that may very well change, and I'm sure when we send men to Mars, and the Computers running those systems are based around Linux 4.2.19 you will be the first to know
RayChuang "While NASA using Linux is very good, when will they trust it enough to use it as the primary OS for the main computers operating the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station?"
that will probably not happen, at least not for a while. Both the Shuttle and ISS are in deployment, meaning that the systems onboars have gone through years of development and testing. You will not see any major change of OS' in most existing systems, (imaging if you spent five years and millions of dollars developing an in house application that runs perfect on Solaris, would you change to Linux or BSD at the drop of a hat? no.) However, you may start seeing Linux in use on new systems.
Sarin "I hope they will give us the sourcecode of the programs they run on that machine, but I don't bet on that. Perhaps we will find out they actually use it to run a slightly modified version of lm-sensors!"
of course! this is Linux, Linux is under the GPL, nothing is available for download yet. currently what we have running is based on Lynuxworks BlueCat, and is really a simple "Hello World" (it's reall not very impressive yet, but we are taking baby steps). The initial work has all been done in house with some assistance from the FlightSoftware and IP in Space groups, once we make things publicaly available (and it will be) source will be included for everything that we work on and can Open up (there are somethings that we will probably not be able to open due to NDA issues, but they will most likely be very specific to the Univ. Surrey Sat (http://www.sstl.co.uk/missions/mn_uosat_12.html ) we will be using for our tests. which is a 386EX) but what we can, we will have available under the GPL
ln_sensors? no, we currently are not using that, although we don't know what we may need in the future.
"Why Linux"