RedHat eCOS Flies in Space · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by michael on Thursday July 3, 2003 @07:20AM from the flies-in-space dept.

Brindafella writes "Brindafella reports that Redhat is flying in space as the OS for Canada's Smallest Satellite: The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX-1)[300k PDF], one of the flock of 1kg pico-satellites launched on 1 July 03 by a Russian rocket. Redhat eCos stands for embedded Configurable operating system, an open source real-time operating system (eCos Home Page). See the eCos Programmer's Guide for the CubeSat Computer: Introduction, Hardware Model, Development Setup, and Loading the eCos. The CANX-1 site at the University of Toronto, Canada gives more details, such as: The satellite is a 10cm cube, with a mass less than one kilogram; The satellite will generate about two Watts of peak power using direct energy conversion; Main Computer Board - Atmel AT91R40807 based on ARM7TDMI Thumb Processor, 40 MHz, 1 MB SRAM, 32 MB Flash, 200 mW max, 98 x 96 x 8 mm."

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Re:And what is cool about this approach... by jwdg · 2003-07-04 00:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

I accept that the development cost is still high - but the reuse of a common platform (for basic comms, power, navigation (if applicable) infrastructure) helps. I notice that ESA has built Mars Express on a standard "bus" that they hope can be reused for other interplanetary missions (e.g. to Venus).
The consequence of increasing knowledge of space technology is that parts of it can maybe be a little more routine (though still scary/exciting when you think that your code - possibly bugs and all - is in space!)