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The Software of Space Exploration

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the software-in-spaaaace dept.

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."

3 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. WorlWind and other links by Lord+Satri · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  2. NASA software by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
  3. opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov by nicholasjay · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.