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The Software of Space Exploration
David Boswell writes "The O'Reilly Network is running an article called The Software of Space Exploration that looks at a number of the software projects that NASA has released as open source under their NOSA license. It explores how they are using other free and open source projects for use in some of their missions. Information about the European Space Agency and other space organizations is also covered." From the article: "A number of tools allow you to track objects in space, from asteroids to shuttle missions. A consortium of scientists working in the field of celestial mechanics has released OrbFit as free software under the GPL. This software can compute the orbits of asteroids and predict an asteroid's future position. You can also track artificial satellites with several free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-freedom options. Amateur radio enthusiasts use Linux and these tools to hear transmissions from the space station or from other satellites in Earth orbit."
On a less practical note, it'd be quite interesting if John Carmack would release the flight control software he has developed for Armadillo's prototypes.
While its highly proprietary code, it would give a sense as to what needs to be tracked during the duration of rocket flight and might interest others in aerospace engineering.
John has been very generous with his code throughout the years and I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this happen (unless he has outside investors that would object).
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.
NASA should be commended for embracing open source software in some of their applications. Much of what they do would benefit greatly from the efforts of a community which is most supportive of their goals. I used to work as a contractor at NASA doing data reduction algorithms on Landsat, and that would be an ideal app for open source efforts. The data is public, so why not the software related to it as well?
Granted, there are some things that require the kind of expertise and customization that open source wouldn't be appropriate for, and I'm sure some of NASA's efforts are classified. But wherever it's reasonable, open source is a supurb idea. Imagine how many CS geeks would love to contribute to NASA just for the fun of it!
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
"Hack the planet!" "Which one?"
The article discusses NASA WorldWind but several interesting links are missing. Amongst them: Punt, a WW fork. Heck, you can also see Microsoft Virtual Earth data in NASA WorldWind itself. Even Mars 3D in WW. (I stop here, if this interests you, read slashgeo.org ;-))
I don't know if Stellarium counts as "software for space exploration", but it's worthed. Celestia too.
Animoog.org
Fascinating! I am always glad to see powerful tools become more readily available. I know the Satellite Tool Kit by ASI provides many powerful orbit analysis tools, but it's not open source (although they do give out free CDs of the basic software, and charge customers for additional features and higher precision functions). Otherwise, a person is often left with trying to translate a LAPACK routine from FORTRAN into something more C-like.
Regards, Robert Miller http://www.rocketscientists.ca/
Your tax dollars paid for it. Download it here.
http://www.nasatech.com/software/
There's some seriously interesting software in there.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You mean free as in cheese
Its good to see something along the lines of COSMIC is still around. But isn't software developed by NASA necessarily public domain?
--sabre86
"While its highly proprietary code, it would give a sense as to what needs to be tracked during the duration of rocket flight and might interest others in aerospace engineering."
Aliens! Definately aliens.
"Free as in beer" or "free as in freedom" trolling? Geesh. How about "proprietary as in SLAVERY AND DEATH!!1!"
Hey "editors", its ok to whittle down the submissions to the "News" part, and leave the sensationalism elsewhere.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
NASA is also doing work using Eclipse as a rich client platform. They had a talk at EclipseCon about using Eclipse for the Mars rovers.
If the folks at NASA were smart, they would set up some incentives for those who make useful contributions or error corrections to their open source software. They could list contributors names in some official gov't document, engrave their names and shoot it out into space, whatever. But I'm sure it would be easy to think up some *very* attractive incentives for young hackers to contribute to their products. And how cool would it be to not only have helped NASA out, but also be able to say that your name is listed in the Library of Congress as a NASA software contributor, or that your name is on some tablet speeding towards outer space?
If I remember correctly the European Space Agency's mission control system (processes the spacecraft telemetry, on the ground) is open source. Currently they are using SCOS-2000. But the best a quick search came up with was via this article on XMM.
I thought the software of space exploration was "Astroids"
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
"La Casa Nostra"... dunno why, other than some synaptic molecule flipping bits...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Masses of space/astronomy open source packages, see
www.openastro.com
NASA developed NASTRAN, one of the most popular and powerful Finite Element Analysis programs, a long time ago and released it to the public. http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/projects/NAST RAN/
That means the terrorists will get ahold of it, track some meteors, and alter their course so they crash into a landmass of their choice! Open source is bad!
</scarasm>
Stallmannnnnnnn
:-D
Innnnnnnnnnnnnnn
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
There are many tools that NASA has developed that fall under International Trafficing-in-Arms (ITAR) restrictions, which essentially means theyre restricted to being deployed to US nationals only. Generally, software that is useful for putting spacecraft on target can also be useful for putting missiles on target.
Theres also the issue of civil service vs. contractor development, as was already mentioned. JPL has developed a lot of fine software, but since they are a semi-private organization that needs profits to operate, they charge (sometimes a great deal) for their software to prevent competing entities (such as APL) from grabbing their work for free.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Disclaimer: I work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and I am speaking only for myself.
I'm working on some opensource software released under the NOSA license.
The general opensource website for GSFC is http://opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/
The software that I am specifically working on is called the OS Abstraction Layer (OSAL). If you code to its API, it will allow you to run code on a VxWorks, RTEMS, Linux, or Mac OS X system. It was designed for embedded flight software use. There will be a new version out in a few months that will employ memory protection. Believe it or not, but memory protection for flight systems has been very hard to do in the past.
I thought Slashdot ran an article about the Apollo computers and in fact, someone actually has the source code to their software, and, the software to the LEM?
This is my sig.
EdGCM is a NASA climate model that has been ported to run on Mac and PC with a GUI interface. Download it and it comes with default climate simulations (modern, global warming, paleo, etc.). Or you can design your own climates!
Space and Computers.
As an aside, it is my opinion that NASA's embrace of Open Source is somewhat of a generational watershed. I would say that most software developers hired in the last several years use and contribute to OSS considerably. Linux servers and workstations can be seen everywhere in development shops.
And on another note, I believe that a major factor for NASA giving software away is what I call "custom software." Software will be written (at great expense) for a specific project, and be used for only a year or two. Then NASA becomes bored with it and starts another project. Server closets are full of old orphan software.
I was fortunate to work with some of the guys who developed CLIPS, a very nice forward-chaining rule engine that can be applied to a surprisingly wide variety of projects. Several variants of it have appeared in the intervening years. There is an actively-developed and fine successor to it, Jess.
I guess I'm bloody pirate ;P
One that hath name thou can not otter