RedHat eCOS Flies in Space

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."

Comments

Why not Linux?

[mnmn]

On an ARM7 you can run Linux given a few more megabytes of space which couldnt be expensive or bulky. Considering the number of things you can do with Linux, its probably worth it.

I'm really wondering if I can pay to launch a small satellite with a tiny laser pointer that can point on various ground locations, and have it point close to me, and watch the spot on the ground at night.