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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.
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/
Its good to see something along the lines of COSMIC is still around. But isn't software developed by NASA necessarily public domain?
--sabre86
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.
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.
> 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.
This is correct: all new ESA missions use SCOS-2000 to process and display telemetry and to prepare and monitor telecommanding. It currently runs on Solaris/SPARC or SUSE Linux/x86.
Current mission using SCOS-2000 include Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta and Smart-1 and coming missions, Herschel/Planck and GOCE will use it.
(SCOS-2000 replaced SCOS-1 (VAX/FORTRAN) that is still supporting the ERS-2, Cluster and Envisat missions.)